Thoughts on life from a survivor

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Some funny things have come out of the #MeToo campaign. Okay, I use the word “funny” to describe things which have no humor about them.

The stated intent was to show victims of sexual assault they are not alone. This result may or may not have been achieved. We are certainly aware a large percentage of people, both women and men, have been comfortable enough to say “Me too.” This is enormous. Although the campaign was originally supposed to be about women, many men have come forward as well, uncovering the secret that any discussion about sex includes all sexes. Unfortunately, even with the barrier lowered from “experienced sexual assault” to “experienced sexual harassment,” the experiences have been exposed as, and this should come as no surprise, personal. One person’s assault is another person’s compliment. This has been difficult to digest for a digital world unaccustomed to nuance.

Society requires sensationalism. It is no longer satisfactory to say Susan doesn’t like Charlotte (who happens to be black), Susan is a racist. If Andy is uncomfortable with homosexuals he must be a homophobe. If Henry lets everyone in the room know he’s available he’s a sexual predator. If Cindy voted for a conservative she’s a NAZI.

One of the reasons a large number of victims of sexual assault did not come forward in the past is because they did not feel they would be believed. There are two parts to the reason they felt so. The first is because the primary defense to such accusations was to blame the victim, and in cases of sexual assault the psyche of the victim had already been crushed once. The second is that a fair number of accusations were false, because even the accusation is enough to destroy some lives; one false accusation can be used by countless defenders of the genuinely guilty.

I do not like to denigrate anyone’s pain. We all have different tolerances, and while in many of the experiences described as “sexual assault” no assault took place, the victim was damaged in some way. The important thing to remember is that damage does not refer to the act, only the result. If Charlie walks into the office and says “How is everyone today?” and Norma is having the very worst day of her life, Charlie did nothing wrong. Neither did Norma, until she claims Charlie harassed her by asking. Making claims of abuse when none has taken place is abusive in itself.

Some of the more abusive claims I have heard in the last few weeks have included a woman who claimed her assault took the form of a man referring to her as “honey.” One word, one time, no other context. Another woman claims to have been sexually assaulted by former President George H. W. Bush, four years ago when he was eighty nine and confined to a wheelchair. Mind you, in both these instances the word “assault” rather than “harassed” was used.

My own most frightening instance of sexual assault was only intimidation, there was no physical contact. I was twenty, driving an ice cream truck through the projects in California when I was surrounded by a gang of Chicanos. One reached through the window and removed the keys, a couple other ones started rocking the truck, tipping it enough the wheels would come off the ground, and the leader hung on the window telling me how they were going to “bone” me. As it was, I had another key and was able to escape, but I was terrified as I lived across the street from the projects and parked my truck out front, it was altogether possible they would see me at some point. I quit that job and moved across town about a month later. So I understand that no physical contact is required to create fear, but I maintain the threat of violence (in any form) is a requirement in order to designate assault.

I have been party to other conversations in which I was told that a difference of opinion threatened the person’s very existence. Fear is present, with no threat. Fear is beyond understanding, it is irrational, which is why it holds little legal standing.

This is why words are important. Assault is a crime, claiming you were assaulted implies someone committed a crime. Falsely accusing someone of a crime is a crime by itself. The lesson we should all learn from the #MeToo campaign is communication is crucial, and without words that have common meanings communication is impossible, often at the time it is needed the most.

It is fairly normal to be uncomfortable from time to time (sorry millennials). The level of that discomfort is the measure of trauma involved. I feel safe in saying everyone has at some point in their lives been uncomfortable in a sexual situation. This does not mean everyone has been sexually assaulted, what it means is that we all deal with life differently. Each and every one of us. My first “sexual assault” (different event, heterosexual) might be described as someone else’s fantasy; I was just unprepared that time and it was outside my desires. It was however an assault, I had no interest and the woman forced herself on me. I would never consider the millions of times I have been referred to with “terms of endearment” as sexual assaults, anyone who does is in need of psychological counseling as they are incapable of social interaction.

My hope is that the #MeToo campaign encourages conversations (dialogues rather than monologues), and those conversations create understandings. Some of those understandings are going to result in trust, some of them may result in discovering over sensitivity, most will result in growth. That would be a good thing, and the world needs some good things.

Nothing reminds you of the passing of time like a High School reunion. It has been forty years since I have seen some of these people, and we had a wonderful time reminiscing.

I have been thinking of abandoning writing. It is no longer easy, I have not written in a month, and I had already started the first draft of my exit. For perspective, I have never written drafts in the past, I just wrote. At a pre-reunion get together on Friday, I received several meaningful compliments, words such as “eloquent” and “thought provoking” were repeated. The very best came from my friend Carrie, who said “I don’t always agree with you, but you make me think.” What more could a writer ask for?

We have spread about the world, and a surprising number of us stayed nearby, some still in town. I’ve been out and back, some never left. Ten percent of our class has shuffled off the mortal coil, which seems high; although there have been a few instances in which I could have been a member of that group. We are, as a generation, perhaps the last of the risk takers.

My own memory is a bit damaged, I could not recall everyone, but I was warmed by the way I was remembered. One man, football player then, told me how he realized later how brave I had been. He spent thirty years teaching High School students and saw how difficult life can be for the outsider. I arrived in New Providence for my last years of High School from California, a long haired freak in a buttoned down community. Forty years later I am still the long haired freak, but the community has grown in many ways. Still some bickering over the election, but for the most part we are a mature bunch. Closing on sixty is a part of that I suppose.

Tied to this were packages from both parents, photographs and memories of my youth. There apparently was a period in my teens when I grew a mustache and goatee, I saw a picture of it a few years ago and my father sent me several others, in which I was wearing a yellow blazer of which I have no memory. I’m hoping they reflect a bad week, the combined photographs represent two moments.

I am fully aware that I do not remember everything. A bit of a disappointment, but considering the memories I have confirmed as true, it’s been a good life.

Like this:

As you may have heard, there was an eclipse this week. I went out to observe it with my colander viewer, having located a spot with full sun the day before. Clouds came and went, we had a good image of the portion visible (or not visible, depending on your point of view) near the peak of the eclipse.

Eclipse arcs through the colander

I recall the camera obscura with a moving box in the 70s, and crossing polarized lenses in the 80s and 90s, but this may be one of the best views I have had. It seems to me odd eclipses are treated as once in a lifetime events, and the current hoopla with Millennials trying to frame themselves as the greatest generation certainly pushed the hype into overload. The next eclipse visible in the United States will be seven years from now, 8 April 2024, with a path running from Texas through Maine. I’m planning a trip to visit relatives in Texas for that, it runs straight through Dallas. This time I was fortunate to have a photographer friend in South Carolina who captured this photograph.

I often refer to eclipses as “God’s Thumbprint,” because the Sun is four hundred times farther away than the Moon, and is also four hundred times larger. The plane of the Moon’s orbit intersects the Sun, so occasionally the moon blocks the Sun perfectly (The Earth blocks the Sun from the Moon in Lunar eclipses). We have evolved to a point we understand the physics involved, ten thousand years from now the orbits will have decayed and total eclipses will be a thing of the past. Ten thousand years ago there would be no visible corona, the moon blocked the Sun with room to spare. Our relationship in size to our moon has yet to be found elsewhere in the universe, these ratios of size and distance and understanding point to a plan, or at very least a uniqueness in the universe in which we are truly alone.

The tendency to ascribe signs of the end of the world has always followed eclipses, even with our ability to predict them a good deal of foolishness made the rounds. Just a word about predicting eclipses. While it may be more difficult that predicting where the hands of your watch will be at 1200 tomorrow, it does involve clockwork. It is not theoretical physics, more like figuring out which day of the week 15 November will be in 2036. One theme I heard repeated was “Why does everyone believe scientists about the eclipse, but not about global warming (evolution/GMOs/chem trails/feminism/etc.)?” And I’m the one with the brain injury. . .

Speaking of which, I do not have a clever segue into ellipses. The ideas were simultaneous but not connected, and I like the way it sounds. In all the fury and hatred flying about, anyone can be a NAZI. Just don’t agree with someone and you’re a NAZI. I am becoming a grammar NAZI, and I’m worried my house will be burned down by Antifa. This is exceptionally stressful because I live in a fifth floor condominium, and the majority of my neighbors are elderly.

There is one form of punctuation that disturbs me when it is misspelled, and I have started to speak up about it. The ellipsis (plural ellipses) is used more and more these days, largely because people don’t know what to say. Three dots, . . . , should be simple, but I see three commas, two dots, seven dots, even four semi colons, and never the spaces between the dots. Some filter is failing because I have started correcting people. And guess what? No one wants to hear they misspelled a word, much less punctuation.

I mourn language. Text messages were once charged per character, so convenient abbreviations was a way to save money. That doesn’t apply anymore, so we are allowed to write complete words, no need to reduce your language to a Bingo game. Spelling is more important than ever, yet the other day, in a publication, I saw Your and You’re both used incorrectly in the same paragraph. A friend found a menu with a “Pre-fix” offering. Even my late wife the chef, who would often retreat to “You know what I mean” when I clearly did not, would never stand for misspelling on menus. If you can’t get the words right, why should I expect you to get the food right. Another friend said she was board. In my first writing class the instructor advised us to utilize spell check, ponder the alternate spellings and choose the right one.

This is nothing small. Those who control language control thought, and the population. Fascism used to mean totalitarianism, check out a dictionary published since 2009 and the definition has changed from “totalitarian” to “right wing.” So all these morons saying they are anti-fascist are not as deluded as we thought. They are anti right wing, because this is what they have been taught is fascism. That they miss the hypocrisy of their totalitarian approach provides both laughter and sadness. I’ve seen their training videos, there will be blood, mostly their own.

I am not really up for this battle. My weapon has always been intelligence, which I was told last year is fundamentally racist. When the opponent celebrates ignorance, intelligence is a useless weapon. I could write programs, identifying the players, but that would require an audience, and they have already decided who the fascists are. They are anyone who does not agree with them in totality, which makes the Antifa easily identifiable, folks who honestly believe physical violence is an appropriate response to words they don’t want to hear, or even imagine might be spoken.

Like this:

In looking for an analogy for today’s topic, Rabies appears appropriate. Rabies is exceptionally rare, between 2003 and 2013 thirty four cases were diagnosed in the United States, and although three cases are listed as “survived,” I suspect the diagnosis in those cases, as there is no cure. Even though the rate of human infection is .00001 percent of the population, every pet is required to be vaccinated against Rabies, because the issue is not prevalence, it is mortality. I have been vaccinated against rabies after contact with rabid animals (twice) and as you can see I did not contract the disease. Had the virus taken hold in my system I would not be here, thankfully the vaccine regimen is much more simple than it was in my childhood; a series of four injections intramuscularly (deltoid) and one dose of Human Rabies Immune Globulin near the site of exposure rather than fourteen injections in the abdomen (a friend from Cuba had fourteen injections into his lungs).

My topic today is another “R” word, “Racism,” as expressed by a rag tag mob calling themselves “White Supremacists,” as well as a large number of people who consider anything with a scent of racism the work of White Supremacists, NAZIs, or the KKK.

This weekend has seen a couple of events staged by White Supremacists. An event in Charlottesville Virginia drew hundreds of them from all over the country, and thousands of counter protestors. There is no question as to which side is larger, for some reason the counter protestors express fear, giving the minuscule number of White Supremacists the power of intimidation. There have been counter protests in cities across the nation, proving to everyone the racists are outnumbered. In the analogy of Rabies, racism is skin redness, identifying as a Racist of any stripe is viral infection. It is rare but deadly. The victim is the soul.

There have been three fatalities reported, a woman struck by a car and two police officers in a helicopter that crashed. The wounded number far more, as any display of hate creates more hate. The kettle of hate is overflowing, as the present first lady echoes the last in saying “Our country encourages freedom of speech, but let’s communicate without hate in our hearts. No good comes from violence” more hateful hearts were busy accusing her of plagiarism than accepting the message of peace. The word “racist” is losing any meaning, as it is thrown around so freely to include “anyone who doesn’t agree with me.” There were actual racists in Charlottesville, free to express their “pride” under the cover of a population that has been called racist for the crime of being white in the South. In fact, slavery and racism are more likely to be encountered in the North, where foriegn nationals are commonly “kept” as housekeepers and treated as sub-human. Human trafficking is a fact in every state, and every country in the world; it is not limited to people of color.

Addressing the 1968 race riots in Baltimore Maryland, President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who had signed the civil rights act into law just four years earlier, said “What did you expect? I don’t know why we’re so surprised. When you put your foot on a man’s neck and hold him down for three hundred years, and then you let him up, what’s he going to do? He’s going to knock your block off.” Blow-back from centuries of racism should be expected, and tensions do not disappear overnight. Racism is a human trait, tied to the evolutionary tool of Xenophobia. Human. I am as different from you as you are from me.

President Trump was criticized for saying there are many hate groups, Lady Gaga was criticized for trying to turn down the hate. The criticisms of both echoed hate rather than a desire to end hate. A shouting match has never ended in a peaceful resolution, no one has ever calmed down after being told to. This is what disturbs me. I feel we were closer to calming racial tensions in the 70s than we are now. Civility in social interactions is as likely to be seen as a Dodo delivering the morning paper.

It is as natural for people of color to distrust whites as it is for whites to distrust people of color. Neither side is “right.” Fighting creates wounds, which memorialize the pain, keeping the distrust alive. Both sides need to stop, and overwhelmingly they have. Pockets of hate, be they NAZI, KKK, BLM, or Antifa, are only pockets and do not represent society as a whole. Saying they do insults the people who are not part of those gangs, and ends meaningful conversation with them.

We have arrived at a time when words are weapons. Choose yours wisely and help stop the hate. Uhura said that in her century we will learn not to fear words.

To do so, we need not only to know who we are, but take satisfaction in who we are. To accomplish that, we need to extend the same courtesy to everyone else. It starts with me. Now it’s your turn.

There is this feature on Facebook called “On this day.” It is a collection of posts you made on the date through the years, I usually see things I am happy to be reminded of, even the less than pleasant moments show I have survived.

I used to be a photographer, and one of my influences was Henri Cartier-Bresson. Cartier-Bresson conceived the photographic concept of “decisive moment,” as he said “To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event.” I took this to the mechanics of film photography, where an exposure could be 1/1000 of a second. There are nine hundred ninety nine thousandths in the second which are not captured in the photograph, along with the countless seconds, minutes, etc. in which no camera was present. A story can be told in 1/1000 of a second, and it may be a completely different story 1/1000 of a second later.

Some days I posted several times on Facebook, there was usually a mood I could get from reviewing the posts, a pattern which gave me some insight into that day. Some days I wonder what I was thinking, how those seconds reflected my mood.

On this particular day, three years ago, at 1003, I posted a video from the concert I had attended the night before (Beck). I remember how much fun we had, how we were dancing so much the video is hard to follow. At 1740 I posted “If anyone needs a roommate, or would like to share a nice place in Princeton, it looks like I’m single.” About an hour later I posted video of a song by the Cars I had taught my step-granddaughter to play on her toy xylophone fifteen years earlier, I commented she was in college by then (2014).

I looked through the comments on the “looks like I’m single” post, and realized again how abrupt it had been. A month earlier I had thrown a lawn party to celebrate Lieve’s American citizenship. We had met not quite four years earlier, and now three years afterwards we don’t speak at all. Somewhere along the line I should have gotten angry with her, I’m sure there were moments, but I had kept my happy memories, and continued to care for the belongings she left in America until she returned. She swept into my life, found what she wanted, and swept out.

Yes, there is insight from this. I am a doormat. I look only slightly deeper and see more similar behavior on my part, my next girlfriend moved in, spent most of her time in Florida, and abruptly moved out, then claimed she couldn’t trust me with her belongings after complaining about how I took care of Lieve’s things (her opinion had been I should throw it all out, we actually argued about it). That entire relationship took only six months, I had become a more efficient doormat. I still collected the things she missed when she left, and brought them to her door, delaying only to avoid leaving them in the rain. Looking farther back, through the lens of a brain injury which has left me even more peaceful, I can see that with the exception of Emma, my third wife, I have always been a doormat. Probably with Emma as well, she just didn’t take advantage of it. I see it as my quality, and find myself doing it even now; thankfully Sam does all she can to avoid treating me in the manner I fall so easily into.

I know I was miserable for months when Lieve left, but I don’t remember it. I know there were signs we were drifting apart, and although I have no memory of purposefully ignoring them I must have. It seems obvious to everyone I talk to about it, yet somehow I missed it. I remember a woman pretending to slap me across the face and calling me a doormat, people told me but I thought I was being a better person, turning the other cheek and not reacting to betrayal. I still believe this to be true, I appreciate the lessons I have learned from being walked upon, and although I have volunteered for a repeat performances, I now know how to avoid them. The surreal quality of all of this puts me in a peaceful state of mind, which may seem incongruous. I am comfortable in knowing I responded with grace despite the (sometimes literal) attacks.

The artist Rene Magritte said “Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see.”

This is not a pipe

This is an image of a pipe, it cannot be smoked, the first step in seeing what is hiding behind what we see is recognizing what it is we do see. I see a happy carefree life, and while I desire to see the reality of the moments I remember as happy, I don’t wish to enhance my existing depression. Fortunately, I am able to see it all as a path, I am happy now so this was one path to happiness, clearly there are others.

I let go. I let go of the pain, but not the memories. Not that such an approach has assisted me in avoiding repeats. I have started to let go of the memories, largely because they suggest to me some friendship or relationship remains possible, and that moment has passed. When I see a day such as the one represented by Facebook, I realize I must leave those kind thoughts behind, I do not wish for anyone to be hurt, including me.

Like this:

As much as I loathe Wikipedia, I want to start with their definition, because it indicates the complexity.

polyamory (from Greek πολύ poly, “many, several”, and Latin amor, “love”) is the practice of or desire for intimate relationships with more than one partner, with the knowledge of all partners. It has been described as “consensual, ethical, and responsible non-monogamy”.

Both Greek and Latin roots? No wonder people have such difficulty understanding. Most people define polyamory by what it is not, an inefficient way to convey meaning, but polyamorists tend to over explain, part of trying relentlessly to make sure everyone is on the same page. I like Merriam Webster’s definition better

polyamory

plural

polyamories

: the state or practice of having more than one open romantic relationship at a time

This removes “intimacy” and replaces it with “romantic,” there are always misunderstandings around intimacy, which I have discussed recently. My opinion is that many people repress their sexuality, in most cases understanding very little about their own bodies. When faced with the subject of other people’s bodies the imagination runs wild, unfettered by common sense. H.L Mencken defined Puritanism as “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy,” I might add, “and being not, the ensuing envy.”

My interest in polyamory came on the heels of three emotionally devastating relationships. I had been happily monogamous, in some instances fiercely so. I was jealous of the young men Emma allowed to flirt with her, which prompted her to toy with my emotional responses even more. When she died I tried to move forward in monogamy, recognizing the importance of communication. Next wife had little interest in communication (she was the one who would literally put her fingers in her ears to avoid hearing things she did not agree with), but she did say something as she was leaving that resonated. She commented about how difficult it was to love me. Her statement made no sense on its own, but was similar to something a woman between my second and third wives had said. The next relationship I had went much the same way, with Nancy saying “Loving you is hard” and then blaming me for her seizures because she was “too stressed out from lying to me.” It was all starting to make sense, so when the next girlfriend took $2,000 and went to Japan to see her grandson, I didn’t find it as disturbing as I should have. I didn’t even mind when she contacted me out of the blue about a year later, acting as if nothing had happened, I just told her I couldn’t see her anymore. I no longer expected honest communication.

I had decided the best way to reduce stress was to stop expecting fidelity, no one could ever blame me for causing them seizures again. I certainly did not expect what I found. When I met Samantha I knew she had other men in her life. There was nothing to hide. A month later I fell, suffering Traumatic Brain Injury as well as several other injuries. Samantha took a month off work to care for me, showing more devotion and care than most of my monogamous partners had ever shown. She has encouraged me to go out with other women, and I have, I just don’t have the desire for multiple partners. I’ve had drinks with one of her suitors, he invited us to come over for New Years Eve last year.

Most explanations of polyamory are centered on what polyamory is not. Part of that is because there are so many ways to be poly. There is no one right way, but there are several wrong ways. As I said earlier, poly people tend to over explain, often creating new terms so rapidly it is difficult to keep up. Sometimes they try so hard to be all-inclusive they can’t be followed, which is why Sam and I created a group for mature poly people. I think we’ve kicked four people out of the group, three for inappropriate advances, another for trying to tell everyone the right way to be poly, implying they were wrong. Our defining blurb includes “My poly may not be your poly, but part of the exercise is accepting that however we choose to live, we are all still poly. No shaming or denouncing the formats we have chosen. We all have opinions, display the level of respect with which you wish to be treated.” Our group presently has over three hundred members, several whom have told me our group is the only place they feel comfortable being themselves.

The universal rules of polyamory are centered in honesty. You do not get involved in a new relationship without talking with your partners about it. My relationship naturally carried that to “No secrets.” Polyamory is not to be confused with “Swinging,” or meaningless one night stands; sexuality is rarely confused with intimacy; having multiple partners does not mean having them simultaneously. One of the most common, and least appreciated, aspects of polyamory are “Unicorn Hunters,” people looking to add a third partner (usually female) to an existing relationship, for any number of reasons. People are not objects you take from a shelf to use until you tire of them, they are not a spice with which you can spice up your marriage. There are plenty of multi-partner households, but actively looking to “add a person” is unseemly.

Some polyamorous relationships are asexual, simply warm romantic relationships. The focus is on communication, not sexual activity (can I say that enough?). Of course, if you want to produce a television show about polyamory, sex still sells. It just doesn’t tell the story. Or it tells the wrong story. There are enough false stories about polyamory that we become a bit defensive, but the fact is, there are many ways to be polyamorous, so we don’t have a comprehensive argument. One difficulty is dating, the phrase “I’m in an open relationship” has been used by adulterers so many times that OKCupid, a large dating web site, has an accommodation for people who are polyamorous. You can link your profile to your partners profiles, there is no question that your partner(s) knows what is going on. Cheating is just as distasteful to poly folk as mono folk, because polyamory is about loving, not conquering.

I have been surprised by the people who show up at poly events, but then, I’m there. Polyamorous people come from every walk of life, every income bracket, and every political leaning. You may be surprised I am poly. It is a part of my life, not all of it.

Like this:

There has been a great deal of discussion about gender lately, yet no information. By that I mean many people are speaking about gender, but actual pertinent facts are rare. I typically prefer to start with a dictionary.

gen·der
/jendər/
noun
noun: gender; plural noun: genders

1.
the state of being male or female (typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones).
“traditional concepts of gender”
synonyms: sex
“variables included age, income, and gender”

Okay, the first problem exists within the definition. Gender is synonymous with sex. Back to the dictionary. Synonymous means “awordhavingthesameornearlythesamemeaningasanother,” and if more people could comprehend the difference in “nearly” and “the same” more issues would be resolved on this planet than I can imagine. Even the text of the definition, “(typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones)” waffles on a solid definition, and “the state pf being male or female” assumes there are only two genders to match the two sexes. So misunderstandings are understandable.

Within that problem is the key to several others, so many issues are considered synonymous with sex. In addition to being the term we use to differentiate egg and sperm carriers, it is also the term for combining sperm with eggs. How it is that Inuits have fifty words for snow while we have just one word for the most essential act of life is relatively easy to understand. People don’t talk about sex, so they don’t use many words. In the “sex-positive” community there are occasionally more words than I can keep track of.

Gender refers to the cultural differences between the sexes. So the parents of a baby girl with short hair hears “Is is a boy or a girl” because one of the few markers of sex at that age (hair length) is ambiguous. I have been called a girl many times because I have kept my hair long most of my life, sometimes it’s an honest mistake, sometimes it has been meant as an insult. Little girls who climb trees are often called Tomboy, society is demanding we conform to gender roles. My youngest son played with dolls, my youngest daughter played with trucks, and today they both display the depth resulting from being “allowed” to play outside their sex-roles.

Sex refers to genetic makeup, males have a Y chromosome where females have an X chromosome, resulting in what are often referred to as “secondary sex characteristics,” breasts, uteruses, and slighter builds for women; body hair, testicles, and greater upper body strength in men. If anyone believes those are the only differences between the sexes, discussions about the difference between sex and gender are pointless.

People who identify as transgender feel they are the sex opposite their biology. While that position was renamed “gender dysphoria” rather than “gender identity disorder” in 1973, thus removing the language of mental or sexual disorders; the fact we are taking about sex caused many to stop paying attention. Yes, we have all heard “Sex Sells,” but most folks would rather not talk or hear about it. A few years back when all the fuss was made about bathroom laws, the greatest fear expressed was that men would be allowed in women’s bathrooms. From a rational point of view this is ridiculous at even the basest level. If surgery has taken place the transsexual woman appears to be a woman. A “man” does not identify as a “woman,” so they would have no desire to use a women’s bathroom. In actuality this was an expression of distaste for transsexuals, most people do not dance about the bathroom displaying their genitals, certainly not transsexuals, and a transsexual would receive no gratification from seeing the genitals which they identify with their own. The pretend issue was it would open the door to predators, that door has always been open. Fears about other people enjoying looking at something demonstrate the veil around sexuality.

As with anything involving humans, the discussion went from accepting the idea of three (male, female, intersex) genders to identifying every possible variant. This confuses people who confuse sex and gender, there are obviously only two sexes (generally, although I have known a couple of XXY people), so how can there be thirty one genders? For the same reason there are only four Cardinal points and thirty one flavors of ice cream at Baskin Robbins. The two words apply to different objects. There can be as many genders as there are people, it is the state of their social differences.

There is little that is binary in our world, with some investigation deviations can always be found. When it comes to sexuality, how could there possibly be only two choices? I doubt every straight monogamous couple approach sexuality in exactly the same way, so “normal” is only a range within the spectrum, not a specific act. When do you decide that someone’s behavior is deviant? When you want to be intimate with them and they don’t do it your way, you might call them deviant, but they might say the same of you. I manage a group of polyamorists, which we organized for mature adults, as most groups are filled with judgemental young people. Our central rule is acceptance, your poly might not be my poly, but you are free from condemnation in our space, hard to believe this is necessary in a lifestyle based on understanding. We have grown to about three hundred members in just over a year, and have only had to kick a handful of people out. There are a few strict rules in ethical non-monogamy, primary is ethical behavior.

Your gender is whatever you want it to be. If you want to be the opposite sex through surgery you spend a good deal of time in psychological counseling, the surgery is impossible to reverse, parts removed cannot be replaced, so it cannot be a whim. In reality, you can never truly change your sex, your forty sixth chromosome you received from your father is either X or Y, that cannot be changed. I have a few transgender friends, running the spectrum from simply being more comfortable in roles opposite their biological sex to undergoing surgery. In the same way I don’t stay up at night wondering if my cis friends are male or female enough, I give no thought to the sexuality of my trans friends. They are all people first.

Like this:

I’ve noticed an increase in the use of the word “bigot” lately. I prefer this word to the misapplied term “racist” or the suffix “phobe.” It tends to be accurate in its application.

“Bigot” is defined by the OED as “A person who is intolerant towards those holding different opinions,” and “Bigotry” as “Intolerance towards those who hold different opinions from oneself.” Are these words not perfect for today’s society? “Racist” has been applied in situations that have nothing to do with “Race,” or even a twisted definition of “Race.” “Homophobe,””Islamaphobe,” and “Transphobe” rarely describe a phobia.

For instance, what would you call California’s recent decision to restrict official travel to states with LGBT laws they disagree with? It is clearly intolerant toward entire states due to differing opinions of the governments of those states. We created a United States rather than a single state to allow freedoms and differing laws. California has decided to ban travel to certain states, but still allows travel to China and other countries with active aggressive anti-gay laws. Like a death penalty for being gay rather than no protection from discrimination. I believe the design promotes tolerance, however the California decision is analogous to covering ones eyes and ears. Do not misunderstand, I certainly have no opposition to various sexualities, but denying commerce and communication is wrong on too many levels to count. California has forfeited the ability to be ambassadors of tolerance in perhaps the most ironic fashion.

I had a friend, we attended school together. We reconnected on Facebook a few years ago, and worked on a couple of charitable events together. She, like many of my friends, is a Democrat. Following the election she went non-linear, to the point I had to “un-friend” her on Facebook. I explained why to her privately, explaining there was no place in my life for her “smiling bigotry,” as she would post absolutely hateful things prefaced with excuses. We ran across each other after the shooting in Alexandria of Congressman Scalise. We have mutual friends, so we end up in the same conversations. Still as bigoted as ever, she continued to spew hate, and when she saw I was there attacked me because I had “called her a bigot.” Well, I guess I was right. She’s still smiling as she tells people that not enough Republicans were killed.

Collins Idehen, under the pseudonym Mr. Colion Noir, hosts a webcast for the NRA. He also writes about gun rights and responsibilities. In the aftermath of the Philando Castile verdict, he touched on bigotry, in this case comparing racism and gun control. “However, there is also a problem with some people in this country dismissing racism wholesale when it isn’t overt racial slurs or crosses burning on front lawns. Covert racism is a real thing and is very dangerous. Covert racism works the same way anti-gunners use coded language to push gun control. They say common sense gun measures, but we know what they really mean. We gun advocates spend our time trying to prove to the people that they don’t just want background checks they want to ban guns. The problem is, they don’t come right out and say,”give me all your guns” so no one believes us, but we know the effects are incredibly real. That’s what covert racism is and does.” What he calls covert racism (and anti-gunners) is best defined as bigotry. A decision on how to proceed based on the objects (Blacks, Guns) rather than the situation.

Another example of bigotry comes from a group that prides itself on inclusion. In fact they’ve appropriated the month of June as “Pride Month.” Three gay people who were also proud of their religious beliefs were not tolerated, and excluded from the “Dyke March” in Chicago for carrying a rainbow flag that also contained the Star of David. This time the bigotry is so strong it has overridden self preservation. Convinced by the “progressive” narrative that Judaism is equal to Zionism, and that Zionism is racist towards Arabs, they found the Star of David offensive. Never mind that the majority of Arab culture is Islamic, under which any deviation from heterosexuality is punishable by death, they found it unacceptable to not include Arabs, so they excluded Jews. Maybe the whole “No Hate” program has them thirsting for their natural drive to hate. I can’t really call this an example of bigotry, because I am not as quick to judge the parade organizers as they are to judge Jews, maybe they’re only jerks, and while most bigots are jerks, being a jerk on its own is not bigotry. Antisemitism often hides as pro-Palestinian or anti-Zionism, and each of those groups are bigots.

Bigotry is simply a negative prejudice, often played out as innocence or jokes. When I moved North, after living in Texas and California, I was shocked at the racism. Yes, there was racism in both previous states, but it was overt. You knew where you stood. In the North, it is covert, small bigoted actions which are less identifiable. Guess again folks, just because you’re smiling and claiming to care, you are still causing pain, and pain is easy to remember for most folks. The victims may not be able to identify the event, but they are aware of the pain, your shock when they respond just makes you appear even more false. Political Correctness is not a disguise for bigotry, it is a showcase.

My mail has been unreliable, apparently I missed the degrees in psychology everyone received. They’re being used irresponsibly, and the value of something that was freely dispensed to all humans can actually drop to a level beneath worthless. Nonetheless, I hear diagnoses and prognoses bandied about by folks who have had no contact with their target patient. Throw a few psychological terms about and people will think you know what you’re talking about; if they’re gullible, or you’re saying what they want to hear. In reality there are a large portion who will see through you, but there is still that seven percent who think chocolate milk comes from brown cows.

A little research reveals this to be a symptom of the narcissism which is running rampant in American society. Narcissists tend to be the first to judge, and the last to judge themselves. Of course, recognizing there is a multi million dollar market for selfie sticks might lead you to the same conclusion. The problem with the uneducated psychologists is they do not realize you may display a symptom without having the full blown syndrome. Yes, we have taken a turn towards narcissism as a society, but everyone with a cubicle plastered with photos of themselves is not a clinically diagnosed narcissist. One diagnostic test that has worked for me is to present someone with a list of the symptoms of narcissism. If they do not recognize any of the traits within themselves, they are most likely a narcissist. A balanced individual will recognize their own faults.

We are not over run by people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), but the number of people openly displaying aspects are unusually prevalent. They are:

Self-perception of being unique, superior and associated with high-status people and institutions

Needing constant admiration from others

Sense of entitlement to special treatment and to obedience from others

Exploitative of others to achieve personal gain

Unwilling to empathize with others’ feelings, wishes, or needs

Intensely envious of others and the belief that others are equally envious of them

Pompous and arrogant demeanor

You see this all around you, just not at pathological levels. You can certainly taste it in my writing. Unfortunately, as with any psychological disorder, behavior that is not addressed self validates and increases. I am troubled for society, the expressions are becoming lethal. When national personalities call for violence, someone will be listening. If that person is less than well balanced, violence of some sort will follow. It starts with rhetoric, and when that rhetoric is challenged the response is ad hominem. I was in a discussion last week about politics, and one person went non-linear, eventually saying “I can have my opinions without factually reporting why I have them…” As I recall, the purpose of exchanging opinions was to convince people of your opinion. This person was under the impression that all that was required for me to accept her opinion as fact was her saying it. If there is truly a New World Order, this is it, “It’s true because I want it to be true.”

My ex-wife was similar. We would be discussing a subject and she would say something which had no basis in reality. When I corrected her she would argue. When I presented evidence she would say “Well, you’ve obviously done more research than I, but I still have the right to my opinion.” One time she actually placed her fingers in her ears because she did not want to hear anything which disproved her point. We’re divorced now. I don’t mind people who disagree with me, I’ve often learned new views, but when someone chooses ignorance over information there is nothing left to talk about.

The issue is not limited to a single group, discussions are becoming more difficult in general, and it’s not just my brain injury. I used to belong to several pro second amendment groups, but a few of them became unstable, with the “gun-nuts” often feared by the anti-gun crowd taking over. They disturbed me as well, so I left those groups. I’ve stayed with a few groups who promote responsibility, finding that conversations with responsible people are more satisfying regardless of topic, there is less a sense of being in an echo chamber when people speak freely and back up their opinions.

This is where narcissism can become lethal. The narcissist, in his arrogance, has isolated himself from other ideas, living in an echo chamber. He believes he is smarter than everyone else, and empowered to apply his concept of justice. The echo chamber is appealing to the narcissist. There are no voices of dissent. In many cases I find they have no intention of making sense, they just want to make noise. Louder is truer.

This week a breaking point snapped, and a man who believed his opinion reflected reality opened fire on a baseball team. He was the typical slacktivist, after firing fifty rounds the only casualty was the shooter. He did manage to wound six people, one seriously, another with a round to the foot. The story has revealed few details as the FBI has taken over the investigation, the rifle has been described as an “AK style weapon” by people who have most likely never held a firearm, and it appears he had been living on the street for several weeks. How he managed to conceal a rifle while witnesses who knew of him said all his belongings were in a bag is a bit odd, as well as how someone could live on the streets when they were carrying a $500 asset.

James T. Hodgkinson had a variety of reasons for believing Republicans should die. In his pocket was found a list of other pro-life politicians he planned to assassinate, because people who wish to preserve life should die. The logic reveals a streak of narcissism. His lack of concern for human life can easily be blamed on the severity of his mental illness, it can also be blamed on media figures who have encouraged violence through their rhetoric. Oddly (?), the media doubled down, suggesting the shooting was not enough. One Democratic member of congress responded to the calls for unity following the attack by saying she thought the shooting was funny. Why we might expect a more solemn response from a party with a history of violent acts indicates we are far more gracious than they are, even as we are portrayed as the bullies in life. This is narcissism showing, the belief they are superior, they have been wronged, no other opinion matters.

Where did this come from? One theory is that narcissists are born out of trauma, another that they are the result of “over-parenting.” I would like to think we can curb the progression from personality trait to personality disorder, but the nature of the process shields the narcissist from introspection. Contrary to popular opinion we are not all psychiatrists, and are ill equipped to counsel the mentally ill. Narcissists deny their own issues and accuse others of being narcissistic. In a defense of the shooting, Democratic Strategist James Devine said “We are in a war with selfish, foolish & narcissistic rich people. Why is it a shock when things turn violent?” Such a transparent statement, revealing his own narcissism.

Facing narcissists in my life for over fifty years, I eventually learned how to deal with them. Don’t. They either become more narcissistic or violent. They unwittingly isolate themselves, help give them what they want, complete isolation. As much as we may say “sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” words do hurt. They can be an incitement to violence against a crowd, or against a single person.

As I approach Father’s Day, I am surrounded by synchronicity, a set of events which appear to have meaningful coincidences. I do not actually believe in the concept of coincidences in the first place, that they should be meaningful absent a cause is more a mind trying to make connections where they do not exist rather than a deep insight, it is, simply, a vibe. But I like the word “Synchronicity.”

My own father and I have had an unusual relationship. I say unusual because it does not seem to be the relationship my peers express experiencing. We’ve been close, distant, and close again for decades. From what people have told me, their relationships have been stable and unchanging. My father and I have both grown over the years, at some points we were on the same plane, others we were not.

Just last December, I was rather harsh with my father. I will make the excuse that I was exhausted from trying to explain the complexity of my brain injury when he popped in with an email of basically “Well what you should do…” after I had been struggling most of the year to do those very things, but I released fifty eight years of frustration on him. Regardless of what I perceived as aloofness, I went overboard. His response was precisely what I would desire, he didn’t make a big deal about it. Instead, when I told him about my surgery in April, he flew in to spend a few days.

Dad as I came out of surgery

I contrast this with several other paternal relationships in my life.

I would like to believe my relationship with my children is similar to that with my father, in the sense I love them no matter how much they turn away from me. Just last week my youngest son turned thirty four, we haven’t spoken in a few years, but last I saw him he was holding onto a coat of mine which he had borrowed on a previous visit twelve years prior. He said it was the only piece of me he had. Nolan has not communicated with me in years, but he has not (as his siblings have) blocked me. He is honest, if he were angry he might block me, he just doesn’t want to get caught up in the drama of his siblings disapproval of me. I’m still holding out hope for the siblings as well, but it’s hard to reach out to them while I’m blocked. I just know how I grew in my relationships and hope they will do something similar. They have a few years to go, I was about the age my eldest is now when I found a way to understand my father, but then I wanted to understand my father, I was a bit more curious.

My son Nolan (in my coat)

My girlfriend has a difficult relationship with her father, and as I examine that relationship and attempt to assist in the repair of it, I appreciate my father even more. Where our differences often were the result of one of us growing in a dimension the other had not (at the moment), Sam’s and her father’s issues appear to spring from a lack of growth. From what I can see, their relationship has not changed over their lifetimes, both seeking the ideal relationship and accepting nothing less; Sam seeking her vision of a proper father and Saul seeking his vision of a proper daughter, neither accepting the other’s frailties. I hear actual expressions of compassion from each of them, but each wants the other to change. This is the problem my children have, they resist changing their point of view for fear of it being perceived as weakness, an acknowledgement of their previous point of view being “wrong.”

These relationships, and those of other people I have been close to, tell me there is no “normal” father/child relationship any more than there are normal interpersonal relationships of any kind. It is certainly common for children to love their parents and vice versa, but as in any relationship, one party’s love does not obligate reciprocation.

I believe my father is proud of me, he recognizes my strengths and even though I did not follow the path he had in mind, I have been a productive member of society. I am certainly proud of the good works he has accomplished. Go back forty years and we were both difficult and less mature.

Times change. Some of the things I did forty years ago are unacceptable now, others were odd then but normal now. As I have come to reconcile my brain injury, one of my primary concerns was that I am not who I was before the fall. My neuropsychologist reminded me that no one is who they were last year or ten years ago, we change, the world changes, and the healthy among us adapt.

Some people refuse to let go of their pain. Some people find themselves trapped in a relationship in which their opposite clings to their pain. The healthy thing to do would be to walk away, but parental relationships can be as painful to walk away from as to endure. Parents tend to understand the delicate balance, which is why I had hoped my own children would see our relationship more clearly once they became parents. One more lesson in “just because it worked for you doesn’t mean anyone else will see it.” That is a lesson I need to relearn often.

If there is a secret, that is it. Learn and relearn. As each participant changes, and the world they live in changes, accept and forgive; this project never ends. It would be nice if relationships were simple, but they are not; they are the connections of two unique individuals. You can blame the frustrations on Fitzgerald, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” or you can change the way you look at it. Leave the past behind, and focus on now, accept and forgive.

Like this:

I am well aware that I do not fit in to the definition of “normal,” the larger question of my sanity remains unresolved.

With a last name of Cash, I have always had an interest in currency. I keep coins and notes from various places in my wallet (European style with built in coin purse), as time has passed and the collection has become more diverse, I have adopted the rationale that when someone someday finds my body, they will be perplexed, it will be my final joke. An inventory this morning reveals;

A 100 Ruble note ($1.69 USD)

A 10 Euro and 5 Euro note ($11.43 and $5.71 USD)

A 1000 (old) Peso note ($0.05 USD)

And in coins;

A Susan B Anthony and “Gold” US Dollar

A 2£ coin

A 100 (old) Peso coin

A Canadian dollar

One French Franc circa 1970

A 2€ coin

An East Caribbean dollar

A two Drachma coin

One each one, two, five, and ten Ruble coins

A Septa subway token

Certainly the wallet of a traveler, perhaps a time traveler? Three passports, a couple of visas, don’t even know my real name? Well, most folks don’t, and I’m not entirely certain.

Folks will think these are hearing aids, when in fact they are the opposite

I had a friend around the turn of the century (this one), when I was working as a technician, and we often said our lives were like having seventeen video screens on at once. Recently I saw a meme about brain injury which used the same analogy, right down to the number seventeen. Maybe that’s why I am weathering recovery so well, I was already like this. I have recently discovered my inner ear is a rather precise barometer, one more thing on my mind as I verify my impression with the readout on my phone.

When I was very young, we had a willow tree in our front yard. In addition to learning one “lesson of the willow,” that it is better to bend rather than to break, I also learned that a willow switch stings more than a belt. Everything has a purpose or two, not all bring wisdom in the same way. In learning the second lesson of the willow, I learned third, that I should not take off with a friend to the ice cream parlor a mile away at five years old. What kind of teacher provides a single lesson? That is lesson number four. It’s an unending cycle, which can be traced back to a willow tree.

I live in a forest, surrounded by teachers and lessons. I remember just about all of them, and their connections form a beautiful matrix upon which hangs the curtain of reality, Maya. I have found that if you don’t recognize the curtain, you can’t look behind it. There is something about having widely disparate bits of information randomly connecting in your mind that either gives you innovative ideas or drives you insane. The trick is recognizing which has taken place. I try to keep an open mind on the subject, it is an exceptionally tight rope.

Society demands binary responses, so my way of thinking often frustrates others. My ability to determine which ideas are “good” and which are “bad” gets confused as the definitions of good and bad take on a life of their own. I consider ideas that some people would not, either because the idea had not occurred or they immediately dismissed it. I am starting to question why I don’t immediately dismiss ideas, and am only mildly concerned I have found no reasons to do so.

There is a good deal of waviness in my thinking of late, as long as I stay out of trouble I can believe I am still making rational decisions, but I see it in my writing, this article in particular, but also several that I wrote following the TBI.

A few weeks ago, a friend brought up a program he had watched which stated you can tell everything you need to know about a person by their favorite super heroes. Yes, middle aged folks still have favorite super heroes. My favorite is Batman. To me, Batman is the epitome of duality. Bruce Wayne by day, Batman by night, both working towards the same goals.

Duality is central to my life. Sometimes I display it on purpose, other times it just occurs naturally. I have an androgynous personality, some tests identify me as male, others as female; a recent survey actually determined I was “undifferentiated – androgynous.” I was born and spent formative years in Texas, then moved to California, arriving in the bay area just in time for the Summer of Love. The cultures could not have been more different, I love them both. I was a peaceful little flower child who enlisted in the Air Force because I believed working in the Intelligence community would save lives. I embraced the duality, it works for me, most of my friends thought I had lost myself.

Following the superheroes conversation, along came Armed Forces Day, and in my group of Full Metal Jacket fans came the comments of millennials who failed to grasp the meaning of the film. Being millennials, they felt the need to lash out at other members, even the group itself, for failing to recognize what the film (made more than a decade before they were born about events from two decades prior to that) was about. It was about duality, children forced into the role of warrior. It was not necessarily an anti-war film, it was a war film, accurate in the effects of this duality on a range of personalities. In fact, the film resulted in increased enlistment. Being able to see more than one point of view is an advantage to those of us who embrace duality. Prior to the making of the film, near to the time reflected as I faced the possibility of conscription, I had a poster with a comment repeated in the film; “Join the Army, travel to exotic distant lands, meet exciting and unusual people…and kill them.”

A dark sense of humor is essential to dualism. The alternative is insanity. The rise of political correctness signaled the death of humor, dark humor is always the first target. I believe this speaks to almost all of the troubles of society, I had always heard that laughter is the best medicine, but cackling at the perceived weakness of others is not laughter. The dual mind sees absurdity standing hand in hand with necessity, laughter is the only sane response.

My bat, man

The following week, I once again faced my inner bat. Clinging to a conduit in the hallway was a small (5 cm) red bat. I considered leaving it there, with the possibility he would never be noticed. Then I realized that when he woke up, he would have no way to escape, so I went back to capture him. Sam came out to watch, thinking I would need help mounting the step ladder to get close. My only caution to her was “I need you to stand here (2 meters away) and if he flies away just don’t freak out.” I have always been startled by people who are afraid of small animals, and if by chance she started screaming it would have drawn attention to the presence of the bat, which no doubt would have led to its demise. Everything went smoothly, the bat objected vocally to being moved but crawled into the coffee can I placed underneath it, I walked out to our balcony and released him. I think Sam was amazed that the little guy had such large wings, easily a 30cm wingspan. He stretched and glided into the woods.

At one time I was “Batman” for a group of communities outside Philadelphia, an Animal Control Officer, part “dog catcher” and part “Doctor Doolittle.” I would speak gently to animals and put them at ease, sometimes to capture them, sometimes to kill them. My acceptance of the duality of the position made it a positive experience. I earned the respect of every other member of the police department, not by being a tough guy, but by fulfilling my lifetime occupation of problem solver. Nothing was impossible, nothing required violence.

Most folks I meet cannot discern who I am, where I am from, what my motivations are. Pity, all they need to do is ask, I am the proverbial open book. Far too many people expect hidden agendas and deception, an honest and forthright person can hide in plain sight. Over the years I have never hidden my religious beliefs, but I have never insulted other religions, so most people think I share their beliefs. The other day Sam and I were on the balcony discussing the events of the year, and she mentioned how incredible it was I had found Dr. Wackym, who performed surgery on my inner ear. It was an indirect path, which allowed him time to arrive at the hospital where my neurosurgeon practices, who I asked for a referral just after he had arrived. Had I asked a month earlier he would not have been there, a month later and the waiting list would have been several months. Events in my life often work out that way, timing and connections. Sam, born Jewish and now a self described Hedge Witch, asked why I am so “lucky.” I told her. “Because my heart belongs to Jesus.” We don’t discuss religion often, she usually treats all religions with some level of disdain, I remain simple, direct, and devout.

As I welcome the return of my personality, clues to who I am come in waves, as these Batman/Duality clues have come. I am of the impression I was a gentle person, and I will be more so in the future. But I am still a warrior.

Though his mind is not for rentDon’t put him down as arrogantHis reserve a quiet defenseRiding out the day’s events

You’ve probably seen this ad on television. You probably didn’t pick up on the sexism it promotes.

It is allegedly an ad promoting clean water. It veers off that message when the actor says “Every day, women around the world spend millions of hours just collecting it” with the implication men do not gather water. I suggest this also reduces the urgency of the message, by providing no evidence gathering water takes a large amount of time. If millions (the ad purports 200 million) of hours are spent daily, worldwide, then of the three and a half billion women on the planet, the average time per woman would be less than three and a half minutes. This includes those of us in civilized countries with running water in the next room, so if water.org is being honest with their numbers, an exceptionally small percentage of women are spending a significant amount of time gathering water. The sexism of the message continues with “Stella Artois has partnered with us at water.org can help provide access to clean water to women and their families…” A quick scan of the small print reveals that the contribution of purchasing a glass will provide five years of water for one person, regardless of sex. The thrust of the statement is women, not water.

Not that I am a misogynist, I enjoy and appreciate women. I am also a big fan of honesty. I like Stella Artois, in fact it is my “go to” summer beer. Maybe not this summer. Back when “feminism” was about equality, I was a feminist. Today it is just a buzzword, often used in ways that have nothing to do with women. Everyone needs water, but Stella Artois and Water.org have managed to “gender” the water shortage, turning it into a women’s issue.

There is another group that no doubt sounds sexist to some people. Texas Baptist Men is a charitable organization, made up predominantly of men from Texas who are Baptists. For over twenty years they have been providing clean water to communities, with drilling and purification projects in over seventy countries. They don’t have commercials with celebrities, they just go out and help people. After the devastating hurricanes in 2008, they traveled to the Dominican Republic. When they left, there was more clean water available on a daily basis than there had been before the hurricanes. They didn’t seek recognition, they were just helping people, using their own funds. Attempts to help in Africa were often stymied by local politicians, yet they did make many attempts to demonstrate drilling techniques using simple local tools and techniques available to laymen. And laywomen, there was no discrimination.

“Gender politics” tend to be about discrediting a specific gender rather than empowering the other. Domestic violence is an example of an issue which has become gendered. Domestic violence is widely considered to be a women’s issue. Why? Women are twice as likely as men to report they are a victim of domestic violence; this does not mean twice as many women are victims, it just means they are twice as likely to report it. This may be due to the sensitivity accorded to female rape victims, society recognized that more rapists would be prosecuted if the victim wasn’t stigmatized. That the same might hold true for male victims was never publicized. Another factor often ignored is sexual orientation. Lesbians are far more likely to be victims than gay men. In those situations, lesbians are more likely to be the perpetrators than gay men. But ask anyone about domestic, intimate partner, or sexual violence, and you will hear how bad men are, we live in a “rape culture,” and perhaps the the most dissonant, “women are weaker.” What an incredibly sexist phrase to come from someone championing equality.

Last year an independent film, “The Red Pill,” was released. You probably haven’t seen it. It is the story of the film maker, a feminist, as she explored the world of Men’s Rights Activists. As happens with many artists, the project did not take her where she had expected. She had expected to show the evils of the Men’s Rights Movement, but as the project progressed, it was her fellow feminists who tried to get her to abandon the project. Once it became known that the film would not condemn the men’s rights movement, she was unable to find funding to cover the cost of the movie from traditional sources, leaving her to seek crowdfunding through Kickstarter. Showings of the film have resulted in protests and outright bans in some instances. The film is not anti-female, it is simply a balanced view of feminism and men’s rights. In a society that thrives on conflict, if you are not a misandrist you must be a misogynist.

I remain confused, as we seek diversity in all things, that the differences between the sexes are so contentious. It does appear, despite the reports in the media, the overwhelming majority of human beings tend to get along with each other.

Like this:

One of the initial “problems” following my TBI was separating symptoms. It seems odd to me, although many things seem odd to me, that my doctors appeared to be dodging responsibility, blaming various symptoms as resulting from a condition in which they did not specialize. “Oh you’ll need to see a (insert specialty) about that” was a shared mantra; was it the MS, or the TBI, or maybe something else? As I zeroed in on the diagnosis of SCDS, I found another area of overlapping symptoms. As I heal from that surgery, I find many of my TBI/MS symptoms relieved at least in part. Much of the brain fog has lifted, I am able to focus and organize thoughts better. My neuropsychologist discharged me from therapy the other day, satisfied that although my recovery is not complete, I have the necessary tools and coping skills to move forward on my own, I am capable of self evaluation.

As I considered the topic I will be writing about this time, it occurred to me that this may turn out more in the style of some of my earlier writing, a variety of events tied by synchronicity. It may end up appearing as the ramblings of a damaged brain, or it may be clear enough to communicate a hidden reality.

I want to start with the “March for Science” held this year on 22 April, at various sites around the globe. I wrote about the march previously, it had appeared to have lost a true science base, appealing to populists who talk about science without understanding it. Nonetheless, it appears some scientists did not care they were being represented by a steampunk contingent and a celebrity with a bachelors degree in engineering, or perhaps they were reacting to the farcical world in which anybody can call themselves a scientist. A group (thirty thousand) of scientists spoke out about global warming. They stated global warming is a hoax. A non-scientist friend disagreed, and presented the following graph.

Misrepresentation of CO2 levels

As someone with the dignity and respect for scientists not to call myself a scientist, I point out the features of this graph. The graph is properly indexed, with the first eight hundred thousand years of data identified as coming from ice cores. The last sixty years of data were drawn from another source, an observatory atop a volcano. The graph indicates a series of cycles, each roughly one hundred thousand years, in which the level of CO2 rises and falls. At the point the ice core samples revealed the latest peak, the data source changes to Mauna Loa observatory, which indicate higher levels of CO2 than had ever been recorded in an ice core.

There is no indication of the data from Muana Loa previously (largely because the data was not being collected), we have no idea how the measurements made there compare to samples from ice cores. All we know is in the last sixty years the levels from the Muana Loa data have been exponentially higher than any ice core sample.

We also do not know how this might suggest global warming, as actual temperature data from the last twenty years have shown steady global temperatures. While there is a debate as to whether CO2 is a warming or cooling effect on the globe, the cyclic patterns which took place for six hundred thousand years before there was a species identified as remotely human would indicate humans had nothing to do with those CO2 levels. As those levels in Mauna Loa’s data peaked over the last one third of their data, actual temperatures have remained stable. But it is a shocking graph, until you read it.

When I was twenty, I drove an ice cream truck, for a company called Tropical Ice Cream. In one of the neighborhoods in my territory lived a man who owned his own ice cream truck, and was not a friendly competitor. One day a little boy was among the crowd at the window, and he said “Tropical Ice Cream is bad, they gave me wrong change.” Not recognizing the child, I asked him why he said that. “Bill (the other ice cream truck driver) told me.” Some folks just repeat what they have heard, without considering the facts. I’m sure the AGW fanatics will continue to argue about science with actual scientists, after all, they heard it from Bill Nye the science guy.

Another science based theme which has been pushed since the March for Science is the anti-vaccination cult. It took the British medical journal, The Lancet, nearly twelve years to retract Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 paper suggesting a link between childhood vaccines and autism, as “utterly false.” His license to practice was revoked six months later. But the anti-vaccination crowd will hear nothing of it, continuing to insist on various reasons vaccines must cause autism without any data to back their claims.

This attack on science is more direct. Rather than falsely claiming to be backed by science, the anti-vaccination crowd contends the scientists who have failed to find any data connecting vaccines and autism are corrupt, paid off by pharmaceutical companies. When it comes to anything even resembling facts in the matter, they are misunderstood or misconstrued. Nonetheless, the anti-vaccination front was represented at the March for Science. Of the many reasons I did not participate in the march, this hypocrisy is the epitome.

Science is designed to be challenged. It is designed to be challenged by other scientists, not celebrities and laymen. It will always be misconstrued or denied for political reasons, it took the Vatican three hundred and fifty years to apologize to Galileo. This year, after an election that highlighted false news, a populist March actually revealed truths; not from the lips of the marchers, but from the scientists to whom the marchers claimed the desire to provide a voice. Many of the marchers are like that little boy next to the ice cream truck, repeating what they heard. They tend to passionately defend the beliefs they have been told they hold, but the scientists are standing up, and their response has been “That is not what we said, that is not science.”

The tide is turning. It may require another three hundred and fifty years, but eventually science will be respected again.

This is me on 12 April 2017, two days after surgery, when my compression bandage was removed.

12 April 2017, bandage removed

It looks severe, and I guess it is, but it wasn’t painful. I’m told I received IV steroids during the procedure, which were supposed to make me feel better. My experiences with IV steroids in the past are radically different, they literally sucked the life out of me when I received them for multiple sclerosis, but I did indeed feel better when I left the hospital this time.

I felt too good in fact. I am supposed to limit myself, some limitations are obvious such as avoiding loud noise (no concerts for two months); some are less obvious, aimed at reducing cranial pressure. I can’t bend over to the point my head is below my heart, I can’t lift more than three kilos, I’m supposed to sleep at a 45 degree angle. I took a lot of scolding to settle myself down.

My symptoms are gone, no bone conduction sounds, no autophony, no pressure in my ear. I’m also less aware of my cognitive deficits, which I knew was a possibility but intend to withhold judgement for a month or two. I do suddenly have tinnitus (out of curiosity I checked the frequency, ~3000 hertz), but that is an expected post surgery symptom which should resolve itself within a few weeks. My balance is a bit worse, so I’m using a wheelchair for the time being. It is fun, but a bit tiring. I can turn and spin as if I’ve been doing it forever, which should be good news; no dizziness or motion sickness. It has pointed out my only post surgery pain, the point on my left hand in which a catheter was inserted to measure blood pressure. The other catheter, made famous by my friend Barry Parham in his book “Why I Hate Straws,” was just a weird sensation, and I had to eat through straws the first two days.

As days go by there are differences. Not always pleasant but there is no indication they are permanent. The hearing is returning to my right ear incrementally. At first, higher tones came through as if they were transmitted by kazoo, scratchy and fuzzy like the teacher character in Charlie Brown. Today they sound more like whistles. I yawned for the first time about four days post surgery, which was a good sign, I could open my mouth fully, and I was tired. I’ve been sleeping a great deal, probably more than after the brain injury, but back then I couldn’t move much so perhaps I was resting more then. Opening my mouth meant I could try more foods, we found a new Mexican place one night that had wonderful food and great margaritas, ranging up to thirty two ounces. I ordered a smaller one but asked the waitress if I could see the thirty two ounce glass, it was a small fishbowl. I’ll have to visit again when I am fully recovered, they carry my favorite tequila.

We’ve been discussing the question, “Was it brain surgery or ear surgery?” in my SCDS support group. A little of both. The brain needs to be moved out of the way, so even though an otolaryngologist does the diagnosis and sometimes the ear part of the surgery, a neurosurgeon must be part of the team to handle the brain; or in my case, a neurotologist (with a T), which is a new specialty, who handles both parts. The condition of Superior Canal Dehiscence was only identified in 1995, it only affects about one percent of the population, and not everyone requires surgery, so it is rare to find a neurotologist, or even a neurosurgeon/otolaryngologist team, who can properly treat the condition. Some people I have spoken with went a dozen years or more seeking a diagnosis, as most otolaryngologists don’t recognize the condition. It took me four doctors, the second one made the diagnosis and referred me to a team I could not trust, so my fourth happened to be a neurotologist who had just transferred to my hospital from Portland. Perfect timing, his schedule is already filled. I saw him first on 15 March, already had the cat-scan which showed the hole, he said he had 10 April available for surgery so we did the audiograms and VEMP testing the next week. Other folks I have spoken with, searching years and finally getting a diagnosis, were depressed. The surgery is scary, I felt a bit of fear, but nothing was going to stand in the way of a solution.

There was more stress in the intervening weeks than I am accustomed to these days, my landlord lost all vestige of civility and kicked me out of the home where I have lived for four years, and the anesthesiology department demanded a full echo cardiogram a week before surgery because the EKG showed “minimal voltage LVH, may be within normal parameters,” which was difficult to schedule because in their request to my insurance they said “routine health examination” rather than “pre-surgical requirement.” We found a place to stay, moved, and laughed with the echocardiagram technician about healthy my heart is. Plus, just watching the echocardiogram was fascinating. The drain pipe in our new place broke about a week before surgerythe plumber came in while I was in the hospital. Even good news, like my father wanting to come out, caused a little stress because I knew I would be out of it most of the time he was here. At least he was able to see my oldest son while he was here.

My father as I regained consciousness

Sam did a wonderful job of preparation, stocking up on soups and broths and creating healthy food I could ingest through a straw, I was just able to eat solids too fast. She was able to have her father over the night I came home, so he met my father. She scolded me into slowing down, along with members of the SCDS group and some of my friends (special thanks to Vince Coviello, who put it bluntly, “Recovery is not supposed to be exciting. Just suck it up and listen to the Docs!”). Sam made sure the place we live is level, reducing the chance of falls, and has been of constant assistance. I’m going to need to do some exceptionally special things for her when I am fully recovered.

I am getting better. The overlap of symptoms with TBI and MS made me wonder what would change; I am pleased so far and have no doubts about future improvement.

1 April 1999. April Fools day, a perfect choice for a wedding date for two people who were each married twice before. If, as Oscar Wilde had said, “Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence, second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience,” what are third marriages?

For Emma and I it was the triumph of passion over ego. There was not much we did not feel strongly about, for the most part we fell on the same sides of issues. There were a few things in which we found we held diametrically opposed viewpoints, but today, eighteen years and one brain injury later, I cannot recall anything to which we did not eventually find a peaceful resolution.

Our passions were intense. I recall meeting some friends at the winery a week before Emma and I met. I was in an unusually peaceful state, and Suzanne (there were five “Sues” at the winery, each addressed with a unique variant of the name) said “Blake must be with a new woman.” I smiled and shook my head “no.” I had no women in my life and was enjoying the freedom. I had just turned forty, and after a series of passionless relationships was happy to have nothing to complain about. She knew what I was looking for, Suzanne and I had talked about it so often she would drop into an imitation of John Lovitz as “Master Thespian” when she said “Passion!” The next week I took Emma on our first date, a Nouveau party at the winery. Suzanne saw us, and silently mouthed the word and thrust forth her hand. It was obvious from the moment Emma and I met.

Four months and two weeks later we married, another eleven years, three months and four days later I was holding Emma as she said “I can’t fight anymore” and stopped breathing. There was little I could do during those years other than to love her.

I truly did not believe I could continue without her. Depending on my state of cynicism I often believe I should not have tried. It has been six years and eight months since then; I remarried, divorced, and had a few relationships. My current girlfriend is similar to Emma in many ways, and radically different in many others. The passion is there. The ego is different, second generation American from Ukraine as opposed to Emma’s first generation American from Sicily, but they are both fierce.

This week, concluding with what would have been our eighteenth anniversary, I will be rebuilding Emma’s “shrine,” a glass case I prepared for her urn just after her death, which has been in a closet for the last six years. The spare bedroom at my new place will house both her shrine and her cat, Autumn. I was worried about keeping a cat in a “no pets” building, but there are provisions in the Fair Housing Act for therapy and support animals, and my doctors provided the required documentation. Autumn is all I have left of Emma, I suspect I will handle losing her much as I handled losing Emma.

As my memory has come into question, some memories seem stronger than ever. Weeks like this intensify Emma’s presence in my mind, although she is seldom distant from my heart. I picture her in her vision of heaven, with her mother and her first husband who she never stopped loving. My life has taken some strange turns of late, perhaps “stranger” would be more accurate; my life was never normal. I struggle to write, and recall that I started writing for the public for Emma. In the last year I have needed to redefine almost everything, Emma and Autumn have been my constants, my F if you will. After my injury Emma was heavily on my mind while little else was, as I prepare for cranial surgery reminders of her hospital experience surround me.

I don’t speak much now. Partially due to the effects of the SCD, partially due to my need to understand what everything, including my own thoughts, mean. Emma comes to me in the silence, and guides me towards light.

With everything which has taken place this year, from the initial accident, trying to diagnose the myriad of problems which arise from fracturing the various bones of my head and elbow, and having an exceptionally difficult tenant, I have been blessed.

I have been forced from my home, in what can only be described as an insane sequence of events. I do not possess the capacity to understand why this is happening, and have no desire to demonize the parties responsible. I am disabled, a month from a major surgery on my cranium, penniless after a year unemployed, and people I thought were friends have tossed me to the curb; in some ways I am thankful. This crisis has revealed the kindness of others.

My ex-wife was kind enough to take some furniture I would be unable to move. Other friends, including people I only know on line have helped. One woman, who I had never met in person and who has differing political views (she attended the Women’s March in Washington) provided her mini-van for a morning, and not only provided transportation, she helped move things. I learned a good deal about her during this time, and am quite pleased to call her my friend. It took a bit to process what had happened, and I found myself shaking.

Liz is a Democrat, who distinguishes herself with her recognition of “limousine liberals.” She doesn’t talk about people in need as she drives by, she stops and helps. This Vassar educated mother of three (two on the autism spectrum) spent her morning helping a conservative punker. Okay, neither of us fit the expectations of those descriptions, which is in many ways the point. Labels are irrelevant, souls are what matters.

We spoke about our experiences, she has children in the Princeton Charter School, which the Princeton Public Schools have declared the competition; and in what I have come to believe is a typical Princeton response the Public School Board is more interested in destroying the Charter school than improving their own students. I saw this trait expressed in a variety of issues in Princeton, ad hominem attacks rather than displays of any measure of superiority. Liz continues to attempt to bridge the divide, hosting meetings of both sides, opening her home (and sledding run) to everyone. We mourned the death of civil discourse, and although we differ in our beliefs of the cause, we share the loss of meaningful debates, recognizing the next step is authoritarianism.

Liz is what I had expected Princetonians to to be when I arrived (shortly after the picture up top was taken). Intelligent, well spoken, and civil. It took six years to find a person fitting that description, and I met her on my way out of town. My experience of Princeton was elitists, posers, and hypocrites. It is very reassuring to know people such as Liz exist in the wasteland of Princeton, reviving my faith in humanity; in a world as torn as ours is, there are still flowers growing between the cobblestones.

This month I have seen some of the best in people, and some of the worst. Life is always about balance. There is something important in there, as I configure what is left of my brain and work through increasing vestibular issues. The rose coloured glasses present an illusion, however the world is not filled with assholes clinging to hatred. There are people like Liz and I, not many, but perhaps enough to turn the tide. Perhaps, although I will never know the outcome. We accept the future is not predestined, rather it is malleable, to be improved with actions rather than curses. The core of meaningful conversations is mutual respect, the absence of respect begets rage, which I believe we can all agree is our present position. The world needs meaningful conversations, which should lead to people who will take actions rather than consider themselves virtuous because they are aware of the issue and have appropriately rebuked those who are not wearing the right colour ribbon. Hope lies in lifting each other up, not in putting each other down. Humans need hope.

There will always be the trolls, and it is altogether possible they will be the majority of the population. I may have thrown away my rose coloured glasses, but I will always believe that love outweighs hate, that one good person is more significant than one hundred bad people. They can destroy a person, but ideas live forever.

I have now visited four otolaryngologists, in an attempt to diagnose and correct the problem. Well, two to diagnose, then two more to find someone I trust to perform the surgical correction.

The first otolaryngologist gave me a hearing test, which returned results consistent with an aging punk rocker. My attempts to explain my experience was not adequate to pull his eyes away from my chart, even though he did conduct the one tell tale office exam that should have pointed him in the right direction. He offered to write a prescription for hearing aids, even when it was evident they would not correct the problem.

The problem, you see, is that I hear too much. There is a “fullness” in my right ear, much like the pressure you feel when changing altitude, except swallowing doesn’t clear it. I hear my heart beat in my right ear from the time I sit up in the morning. The shower hitting my spine is deafening. My voice has a bass resonance in my right ear. Sound builds, so in a short time all I hear is the resonance (autophony). These sounds are heard through bone conduction, which is why I hear them and you don’t. Normal people hear sounds conducted through air, and entering the ears.

The test the first otolaryngologist performed that should have pointed him in the right direction was placing a tuning fork on my skull, then holding it over my ear. I could not hear the tone in my right ear, but it was loud and clear when the fork was placed on my skull. Opposite results for the left ear. So he suggested a hearing aid, and I suggested a different doctor.

Doctor number two recognized the symptoms right away. He called it “a third window,” a reference to an extra opening in the Superior Canal of the vestibular system, which is attached to the cochlea. The medical name for the condition is Superior Canal Dehiscence, or Superior Semicircular Canal Dehiscence, Syndrome (SCDS or SSCDS). I’ve learned lots of new words, but I’m still not sure about the pronunciation of “dehiscence.” As you can see from the CT image below, and probably guessed from the explanation, corrective surgery takes place within the cranium. The canal is a bony structure adjacent to the temporal bone, on the “in” side. A hole is drilled for access.

The “third window”

Doctor number two could not perform the surgery, and referred me to a specialist at the University Hospital in Newark, NJ. This doctor did more tests and did a CT scan of my temporal bone. She definitively diagnosed the SCD, but was so disorganized and scattered I wouldn’t trust her to open a can of tuna, much less my cranium. I remembered my neuro surgeon from the accident, and contacted her. She referred me to doctor number four.

Doctor number four is Dr. P. Ashley Wackym. I have seen a few dozen doctors in the last year alone, he is the first to impress me. Alright, he has a lead initial, so there is a sense of kinship, and he dresses well, a nice suit and sharp shoes; but what blew me away is that I did not have to explain my symptoms, he asked me about each of them with familiarity. Another thing which gave me an odd comfort is that many of the symptoms of my TBI are also symptoms of SCD, in other words, correcting the SCD may assist with the issues I am working on with the TBI. Wouldn’t that be lovely?

From what I have read, SCDS is very rare. This may be because it was only identified in 1995 at Johns Hopkins. An estimated one percent of the population has the dehiscence, and many do not develop into the syndrome. Not every doctor knows it even exists. Severity varies, and in the big picture my case is not serious compared to patients who cannot stand because their balance is impaired beyond therapeutic correction. I just have so much annoyance with my hearing that I would be most comfortable as a hermit. I am frustrated because going to hear a band requires a day of rest before and after. I have considered putting a spike in my ear to relieve the pressure, but other than that my life is not in danger. When I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis it was relatively rare, largely because diagnosis was so difficult. With the advent of better diagnostic tools, we hear about people with multiple sclerosis every day. I knew a woman diagnosed at the same time as I, who had been searching for fourteen years, trying to maintain a grip on her sanity. The stories I hear from other SCDS patients are much the same.

I look forward to the surgery for a variety of reasons. An end to the noise will be wonderful, and the experience should be fascinating. I will spend two days in the hospital and recover at home for six weeks, and I’ll probably have a scar on the side of my head which will alter my choices of hair styles. Maybe it won’t work, I could lose my hearing completely (which would not be terrible if the autophony goes away), it could simply not work, or any of the myriad of surgical complications could happen. Anything could happen with the surgery, without it one thing is certain, the noise will continue until I lose my sanity and find a window large enough to leap from.

Like this:

I have something of a love/hate relationship with “Science.” My father would be considered a scientist today, he has a degree in chemistry, and actually worked as a chemist for a few years before applying his degree towards the sale of devices to measure chemical processes. This is the “Science” I grew to love, every evening there was likely to be at least one discussion about science and its applications, they might relate to the preparation of dinner, the PH balance of the pool, the earthquake we experienced the night before, the latest gas chromatograph or liquid scintillation counter his company had produced or the most recent space launch. I remember being yelled at about a few projects I had devised with my chemistry set, a part of me chuckled when he would say “Don’t you realize what could happen” because I did, that was the purpose of the project. Back then, a scientist performed research.

Science made sense. It was rational. It didn’t care how you felt about it.

As an adolescent, “Science” became popular with society. Quotation marks science, just the word, not the method. With total disregard for the scientific method, the word “science” was bandied about as if it were some deity. In many cases, it was, as people made thoroughly misinformed statements about a conflict between God and Science. This is where my hatred was formed. An individual who understands neither God nor Science claims they are in conflict. Were it one person the data would be anecdotal, but it was common. This is the beauty of science, you can reproduce the experiment yourself. Ask a dozen atheists about a conflict between science and God, they will demonstrate an ignorance of both, regardless of the God in question. Well, perhaps not in the case of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but any religion based on historical texts. The most frequent error is assuming a religious text is a science book, then pointing out differences in language. Assuming every follower of a religion interprets the texts precisely in the way the atheist interprets what he’s heard about it is also quite common.

As common meanings continued to be discarded, everyone became a scientist. Typically the credentials these scientists hold is having read an article about an interpretation of an abstract. In an impending “Scientists March on Washington” everyone is included in the name of diversity, it’s not even being called a “Scientists March” anymore, within days it became “The March for Science.” It was no longer about science, it was about “Science” advocacy, which means whatever you want it to mean. I received this message before dropping out:

“We are taking seriously the many important criticisms regarding (lack of) diversity on social media stating that for this march to be meaningful, we must centralize diversity of the march’s organizers (both in leadership positions and at all levels of planning), speakers, and issues addressed as a principal objective for the march. We hear you, we thank you for your criticism. In the March for Science, we are committed to centralizing, highlighting, standing in solidarity with, and acting as accomplices with African American, Latinx, API, indigenous, Muslim, Jewish, women, people with disabilities, poor, gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, trans, non-binary, agender, and intersex scientists and science advocates.

-March for Science Diversity Team”

I’m not quite sure what “Centralized Diversity” is, I had heard enough doublespeak to know better than to pose a question. Which is, of course, the reason for throwing around the word “science.” To silence opposing viewpoints. To enhance the self described “intelligence” of the speaker. No doubt it works with large groups of people. You have heard someone say about anthropogenic global warming “The science is settled.” Science is never settled. Anyone who tells you it is does not understand the scientific method. Science is about excellence, not diversity. You do not know who George Washington Carver was because of the color of his skin, or Marie Curie because of her gender.You know them because they performed revolutionary experiments, verified their results, and then communicated the reproducible results.

So it is a Brave New World. I’m thinking it’s more of an Animal Farm, the porcine population seems unusually prominent. I am fortunate in that part of my therapy is recognizing things won’t be like they used to be, but it is supposed to be me that is different.

We made such complicated things look so simple, we forgot how hard it was to get here. Everyone was not just equally important, they were special. Everyone might be unique, but they cannot be special, superior to each other, and still equal. The next step is even more bizarre, everyone else is stupid. I’m not sure how these folks celebrate diversity when they truly believe people who do not share their views are not just misinformed, they are mentally deficient. This would give me a headache even if I didn’t already have a brain injury. The generalities and exclusive inclusion suggests a logic most often found in asylums.

You will see a March for Science, they’ve already ordered merchandise for the selfie crowd. Suggested speakers include Alan Alda, whose television commercial mocking actors as doctors should be force fed to the organizers of the march a la “A Clockwork Orange.” Other pop-science advocates have been suggested, Bill Nye and Richard Dawkins among them, and Neil deGrasse Tyson surely won’t miss an opportunity to be on camera. Sir Magnus Pyke would have been excellent, but as an actual scientist I suspect he would have declined. What you will not see is a march of people who are scientists, or have any idea of the components of the scientific method. It will be a March for Obfuscation, quite the opposite of the original intent.

I had hoped, out of naivete, to actually advocate for Science, perhaps help lead people to an understanding of why the method has been revered since the seventeenth century. Perhaps the realization that we have arrived at the tower of Babel is the most depressing thing I have learned in all of this.

Like this:

I’ve been doing some cleaning, physically and metaphorically. Sam is moving in, so I am making space for her, and as I do so, I find myself making space in my mind.

Today, I started organizing the “cat room,” a large walk in closet in the hallway which holds Autumn’s food, water, and litter box. It has a great deal of storage space, which has never been wonderfully organized, and after I changed bedrooms last year it failed to miraculously arrange itself. So far I have combined the contents of two shelves into one full shelf, one empty shelf, and a full recycling bin. Three shelves and a four by six floor to go.

Some of the items that made it to the recycling bin were my collection of Belgian beer bottles, which I had already been feeling rather foolish about. It started a few years ago and spread to cover every windowsill in my bedroom, but was really the domain of a teenager. I wasn’t bothered at first, convincing myself it was a sign of rebellion, not acting my age, but in reality it was silly.

I threw out my retirement notebook with all my 401k statements, it was rather depressing to see how much money I had when I retired, and the memories of where it went. I’ve been shuffling off my memories of Lieve and her children over the last few months, forgiving them for their behavior, this was a good physical act to remove reminders. It has been an interesting exercise, and I am fairly certain I understand the events better than when I was living them.

Two large packages were paperwork from Emma. All sorts of things I shouldn’t have, she saved everything. I have her documents safe, in these packages were her previous marriage certificates, and Death certificates from her husbands and father. Pay stubs and IRS returns from before I met her, photographs of her father and mafia elite, a lithograph her father had purchased for his grandson which no one ever wanted to retrieve. There were some things I kept, pictures of her in grade school, cards I had given her, and the silliest picture of her on a tractor which her first husband had adored; it makes me happy to think of them together now.

I’ve been moving around a number of “feelings” lately. I have chosen to walk away from a few friendships with people with myopic views of the presidential election rather than argue. Some were so vehement in their passions I actually found it necessary to block them. Oddly, this space has allowed me to make new friends, they share the beliefs of my old friends but feel no need to bring it up in every conversation. This is not a unique situation, Lieve and I were visiting one of her friends back in 2013 and said “We brought you something you’ll like.” She responded “Dick Cheney’s head on a platter?” This was four years after Cheney had left office, but he was still on the top of her mind, probably dying of loneliness.

I settled my feelings about a woman I cared for deeply who had brain damage. It saddens me that I needed to experience it to understand it. I had known she was fragile and was exceptionally gentle with her, but my fortune was to know her during a remission of symptoms, I was not responsible for her relapse.

A friend called last week, in panic. She had overstepped her morality, and was filled with shame and embarrassment. I understand how that works, but I don’t truly understand the feeling. I was quite impressed she turned to me, I know I’m a warm and understanding person, but my morals have been questioned repeatedly. We share the experience of losing a spouse, so I suppose that is why she trusted me. My brother (yes, I am accepting that I have a male sibling) once told me I had no morals (I did, they just were not his), I could never tell if he was serious or jealous. Most likely he was just judgemental, which I increasingly am not. It is pleasing to know that I am seen as non-judgemental and egalitarian.

I am doing better with the analysis of my thoughts and motives, and although this gives me insights into the thoughts and motives of others, I dare not reveal what they show me. In a conversation about an article in Pravda about unrest in America, one person suggested the use of water cannons to disrupt protests. This sparked a discussion on why water cannons are not used in America, with someone insisting that water cannons and mace are still used in America, which turned into an argument about the difference between “mace brand” and “MACE.” Yes, the conversation about a Pravda article claiming that Americans will argue about anything devolved into an argument about anything other than the subject of the article. I watched helplessly as any possibility to share information vanished. One person stepped in and made the point I was trying to reveal, they were ignored as the argument carried forward; the initial discussion completely forgotten. This is why I am shying away from discussion, most people only want to argue. I do not. I want to exchange ideas, which does not happen on one way streets.

I am finding peace in stepping away from disruption. This may result in life as a hermit, everything has a price. I still believe the tide is turning, I’m just in no condition to surf.

Like this:

Happy New Year. I am much happier today than I was one year ago, waking in the hospital with what must have been a wonderful assortment of drugs. I do not recall pain in my elbow, but it was still a few days until I realized I no longer had an elbow. It must have hurt, previous experience suggests morphine would have eliminated pain without clouding my memory, although the brain injury should have clouded my memory.

Today, that rebuilt contraption functions better than any of the doctors and therapists expected, better than most of them thought possible, better than any of them were capable of doing themselves. That is one of my triumphs, something I am proud of even though I had little to do with it.

It appeared, to everyone, that an inordinate number of performers died in 2016. David Bowie died on the day I started writing again. It is difficult to remember, I can’t remember writing, but the article existsand is accurate and not horribly written. The brain injury was apparently not clouding my memory at that point. I could only have been typing with my left hand, I remember frustration with using the mouse left handed, and I remember the initial reports on the internet. I remember Sam being there, and saying to her “I think Bowie died.” This is how my memory works now, bits and pieces. From what I have been told, my brain may take another couple of years to heal, perhaps I will have rich, full memories again. They still exist for some moments of the past, not as many as before, but none in the past year.

They tell me I will continue to get better, and that progress will not be linear. My goal, which I believe I have achieved, is to accept this. I no longer judge myself against two years ago, I judge myself against two months ago. I don’t always see the improvements, but people around me do. As many reminders I receive that TBI is an “Invisible injury,” I like to believe what others see as improvements.

There have been some disappointments, but I am certain I am not the only one to have been disappointed. I like to think I have become accepting and tolerant, and in reality one cannot be tolerant unless they are aware of what they are tolerant of. The election cycle appears to have been far more divisive than previous elections. I have friends who stepped away from social media altogether, many of whom have stated “All my friends became monsters.” I have seen a failure of civility, related to but not a part of the election. The route to proving one’s point has somehow degraded to insulting the opponent’s intelligence. It hurts a bit when you’re recovering from TBI, but it has been a learning experience, both in illuminating the character of people who claim my opinions are due to my brain injury, sometimes in crude and derogatory terms; and in learning not to argue with people who have no interest in reality. I am trying to open my own mind, I do not have the energy to open others.

I have not been as irritable as it appears is common in people with brain injuries, I have become more frugal with the energy I am willing to expend. It is fascinating to discover how much energy it takes to do nothing, I find myself exhausted after completing one or two simple tasks in a day. I shy away from meanness and anger, so perhaps I am more sensitive to it. People rarely feel they are cruel, telling them so makes them angry, so I have had to simply avoid some dear friends and family. This should tell me something about my former self, I have yet to figure out what I have learned. In some cases I wonder why I ever put up with them in the past, in most cases I see my own failure in enlightening them.

I have done enough. That’s just me talking, I really have nothing to say in the matter, but I have no desires of conquest. I intend to spend some time volunteering at the Brain Injury rehabilitation center down the road, I recall an ability to communicate with the non-verbal. I haven’t expected a long future for some time, but I can do my best with the days that present themselves. Who knows? Maybe I will fulfill my genetic predisposition and go another forty years. Time will continue, and all of this will eventually be meaningless.

Like this:

From what I hear, I am improving rapidly. I don’t see the improvements themselves, but I see the results of the improvements. I have learned a good deal through this brain injury, one more counter intuitive duality of TBI.

I am more thoughtful, slowly forming opinions about everything. Being less sure of reality has benefits. I am not certain of my own history, so I am a man of mystery to myself. I have far more memories than should fit into a normal life, but most of them suggest my life was anything but normal. The ones I can verify are less concrete than the ones I cannot, so I lean toward believing all of them. My sense of caution tells me not to discuss a past I cannot verify, so for the most part I’m sticking with my cover story.

I know I am impaired, but impairment is relative. I would ever so much like to accept my present condition, there is no reason to believe I will be who I once was (whoever that may be), and frustration over my loss is allegedly detrimental to progress. Of late my frustration has been over recognizing my disability. I am better than I was a few months ago, I may be better than the average person, but I am still not functioning as I once did, so people who expect that level of performance become frustrated with me, and in turn I become frustrated. I am the one with the brain injury, yet I am the one who is supposed to be understanding of others.

I received a letter from Social Security telling me I have been approved for Disability payments. Page two lists the amount of the past due payments, and the percentage that will be paid to my attorney. Page six states I have no past due benefits. I called the attorney for clarification, but they had not received the letter. I emailed a copy of the letter, and their response was “You have been approved for disability.” I knew that. No response to my question about past due benefits. But I’m the one with the brain injury. Apparently they finally received the letter, and I received a letter from the attorney, which included “I feel you should have received your past due benefits by now, if you have not, please contact the office.” I contacted the office again, and was told I have been approved for disability payments and the letter from the attorney was a form letter. Thank you for keeping me in the loop. But I’m the one with the brain injury and all these wacky ideas about proper communication.

I feel compelled to meet new people, but my old habits of closing bars do not fit my current abilities. I can still drink more than the average American, but even sober I am uncomfortable driving in the dark. At Samantha’s suggestion, I have become involved in a couple of “Meetup” groups, and created a profile on OKCupid. A friend, who “tunes” dating profiles professionally asked if I was ready to date. I had not given it a thought, so I guess the fearlessness is returning, I may be the only person who values that return. I’m ready to be rejected again, and opening more of myself to attack. In one of my Meetup groups, “Beer Fridays,” I met a woman who does not drink beer. She wasn’t sure what the group was about. But I’m the one with the brain injury.

I have noticed a peculiar group developing. There is a small number of people who wish to overthrow the recent election. At first I thought they were Democrats, but I have friends who are Democrats, and these folks have little in common with polite society. A few of them have asked to be friends, which at first I found admirable. My heart remains open, I still enjoy intelligent discussion with those of opposing views. Apparently, I’m pretty gullible, they had no interest in conversation, only in someone to spew their hatred towards. Their aims seem to aligned with Daesh, the Intel specialist in me is a bit alarmed. I hope they learned, from my polite goodbyes, that grace is an admirable quality, but I strongly doubt it. This is one in which I can say “Yes, you do have a brain injury. Be careful, the world is not filled with nice people.”

Today, my Tecfidera, the medicine I take for Multiple Sclerosis, was delivered four days late, by United Parcel Service. My door is not easy to find, but that was not the problem as the driver left notes on my door. Right under the heavy knocker which he must have thought was ornamental, and across from the doorbell which eluded him. I’ve worked around UPS drivers in the past and know to require a signature on deliveries, their “loss” rate is phenomenal. I saw the truck pulling away, and went out to find another note. No contact information on the note, they really don’t want you to call. Sam found a way to contact them, and they sent him back; she went to the door when I saw the truck pulling in. He said to her “Well, if you’re going to have an attitude, I won’t deliver here anymore.” I cannot imagine why I was charged extra to have a driver come to my door and insult me, apparently that is the point of the notes, to avoid the driver. I know these drivers are under immense pressure, I saw one crack over a wrong address when I worked at the Police Station. This incident was inexcusable. I got a call from the local office wondering why I didn’t just go to their office and pick the package up. Apparently they only drive the trucks around as advertising. They said they would talk to the driver and get back to me. In the 90s I watched a driver walk through security at a UPS hub smoking a joint, the security guard just said “you’re not supposed to smoke in here.” You were not supposed to smoke in the entire multi building facility, and they allegedly had routine drug tests. I will be specifying FedEx for future deliveries, and will lobby to drop UPS from the preferred carriers list, but I’m just an unreasonable crank. That guy with the brain injury.

Part of the difficulty in finding who I am is discovering what planet I am on. I have memories of a place where people strove to communicate with each other. It would be easy, and from what I have read from other TBI survivors quite common, to feel alienated. I am either an alien or severely confused about proper behavior, are these memories of a civil society false? When I was told that people with brain injuries often are irritable and cranky, I thought it was frustration about inabilities. Then I thought it was from frustration about the processes we have to go through, with a brain injury, to be accepted as having a disability. At this point, as I become increasingly irritable and cranky, I can see it is due to frustration about the inabilities of the world in general.

I have a brain injury, and am keenly aware of my impairments. I may even overcompensate in order to appear “normal.” The more I interact with people, the more I realize I’m trying too hard. “Normal” is nothing to be proud of. I am a stranger to this world, and rather happy to discover that fact. It is kind of cool being a Man of Mystery.

Some memories are fluid, untrustworthy as they embellish themselves. Some are burned into my soul, so even as they hold beautiful moments, they are solid, comforting in their details. As time has passed this last year, some memories have been lost, and some have resurfaced, bringing me to tears. This is one which touched me deeply.

The memory is of tomorrow’s date, 20 November, in the year 1998. I had just turned forty and ended a relationship. The week prior, on my birthday, I had stopped by Chaddsford Winery, where I had worked for a few years and was part of the family. I had just had my tragus pierced, and was in a very good mood. My friend Suzanne said “You must have found a new love, you’re glowing,” to which I replied “Nope, no relationships, I’m taking a break,” much to the shock of the table. I had a well earned reputation as a ladies man, my friend Pete once exclaimed so loud my date heard him, “Where do you find these women?” I told her he was complimenting us both.

The memory of 20 November was inspired more by some flowers than the calendar, more on that later.

There was an event coming up at the winery, a Nouveau tasting, and I needed an escort. I found this ad in the paper.

Emma’s personal ad

This was a world before the internet, with personal ads in newspapers and conversations by telephone. We eliminated the goal of “lifelong partner,” her husky voice informing me that there were two things I needed to know about her, she was Sicilian and she smoked. Ironically, I was with her for the remainder of her life.

I picked her up at her apartment, she didn’t want me to come to her door due to her dog, a two hundred pound Rottweiler. As I waited in the car she came out and first approached another car, she later told me she had asked if he was Blake and he had said “I sure wish I was.”

I drove us to the winery, there was a light rain. As we approached I told her I knew an alternate entrance, through an open park behind the winery. It had not occurred to me how strange it would be to drive off the road and through the woods with someone I had just met in person, later she told me her hand had been on the door handle the entire time.

We had a lovely evening, I’m fairly sure she was impressed with the way we were treated by Eric and Lee, the owners. We were kissing quite a bit in the barrel room and she suggested we continue at my place. I did not need to be asked twice. When we reached my room in South Philadelphia, a “trinity” with a winding staircase, she looked around and said “This won’t do at all” quite severely. I wasn’t sure what she meant, until she continued “You’ll have to move into my place.” I had been in her presence for about three hours, but had no reason to argue. I went down to the kitchen to get some food, and returned to find her on my bed in a lovely corset. At some point we slept, we awoke intertwined.

I drove her to a little pancake house near her place for breakfast. I had Belgian waffles, then I dropped her off and went to my weekend job at a florist North of Philadelphia. When I arrived at work my friend Beverly picked up my vibe and was ecstatic for me, preparing a bouquet for my new date that evening with Emma. Emma brought her handcuffs. It took almost a week to move into her place in Delaware county.

Now the flowers.

About a month later we traveled to Bloomsburg Pennsylvania to see my oldest son Leyland in a “A Christmas Carol.” The next morning she suggested we “stop by” and visit her friends Catherine and Bill in Staten Island. She never was much for directions, but my ex-wife had been rather rude the night before (she was under the impression I was coming to see her) so I was seeking a way to sooth her.

We finally located Catherine and Bill after dark, and had quite a bit to drink with them. At one point Catherine reached over and broke a piece off of a plant about six inches long, telling Emma it would root if she just stuck it in some dirt. Last month, eighteen years later, that plant finally died. It had flourished, and had been shared with several friends through the years. It is called “Crown of Thorns” and produces small pink flowers. At least ours did, no one else ever saw them, and Emma felt she had an intimate relationship with the plant, which was producing the flowers just for her.

When Emma was in the hospital, just a few days before her death, some friends brought a plant. It had a much thinker trunk, but it was the same species, Crown of Thorns. I have had that plant for just over six years now, and the other day it produced flowers for the first time. I was so excited Sam heard me in the other room. These flowers are white, but apparently there were pink ones previously, the petals remain nearby.

new flowers

These flowers remind me of the entire story. So far the majority of my rediscovered memories have been pleasant, I always had trouble remembering bad times. I know Emma and I had disagreements, but we usually ended up laughing, like when she threw a spoon at me and it bounced off my head and embedded into the ceiling.

I worry sometimes that I dwell on Emma. Right now exploring memories feels safe, I don’t focus on a single moment and repeat it, I just have a wealth of pleasant moments with Emma. I have no desire to live in the past, I’m just glad I remember it.

Like this:

I have been attempting to put my personal issues into perspective, recognizing that my impairment is not the end of the world. In the meantime, the world ended.

I was once a fairly sharp analyst, at least two sets of memories indicate this to be true. One of the main reasons I had wanted to emigrate to Belgium was to miss the presidential election in America. As it worked out, the woman who left me behind returned in time to vote with her fresh citizenship. Had I been with her perhaps she would have stayed in Belgium, the equation is too difficult to approach.

So here I am, unable to endorse either major party candidate. I would like to make a change in our lexicon, changing the word “vote” to “endorse.” I suspect people would have an easier time accepting their role in the process if they realized the position was not solely their decision. My personal choice was Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, largely because I overestimated the American voters, and thought all the folks who were upset about Bernie Sanders being cheated out of the Democratic nomination would actually vote for a third party candidate like they said they would. All that would have been required would have been for a third party to receive 5% of the vote, but that did not happen. They were all demanding honesty but couldn’t come up with any of their own.

Wednesday morning I woke to the news Trump had won, I had pretty much figured it out before I googled for the results, there was no “We Won!” fanfare from the liberals. I also had some messages from Belgium, one right wing politician was rather snippy about me and “my kind,” had I been in Belgium she might have figured out who me and my kind are. I was called a racist and a homophobe before I left for therapy, and couldn’t bear the wailing and gnashing of teeth on the radio so I put on something more comforting. I found that the bass tones on Courtney Love’s album “Live Through This” match my hearing disturbance and were quite soothing at high volume. “Asking For It” almost put me to sleep.

So there I am, at the Brain Trauma unit, and of course the elephant in the room was unavoidable. We work on mindfulness and cognitive therapies, ignoring reality is frowned upon. As I spoke with my therapists and other patients, I heard the phrase “You’re the most sensible person I’ve heard from all day” a couple of times. I have come to expect it from the other patients, coming from a therapist it was a bit unusual. Me, the guy with a brain injury, was the most sensible person she had heard from all day.

I remain impaired, plagued with neural fatigue after something as simple as a Lumosity session, as well as losses in processing speed and memory. I have regained my sense of humor, and the bloodwork indicates my hormones are once again balanced, but there has been no physical or emotional confirmation. I consider myself “better” because I can recognize I am unemployable. My neuro-psychologist says that high functioning brain injury survivors take the most therapy, because we have so much difficulty accepting our limitations. I understand, that is to say I know what is holding me back, and for the first time in my life I can’t conquer it. The astrategies which worked in the past, denial, working through pain, only make the problems worse and slows any actual recovery. Punching my way out only leaves me with bloody knuckles.

I can’t really ponder my future, fortunately I don’t care. I know I can’t sustain my lifestyle, I can’t even manage to make it to my friend’s gigs; last week I couldn’t accomplish a day trip to see the “Monkeemobile” at a local shop. I feel more isolated, but the physical isolation doesn’t trouble me. The mental isolation does, if you will excuse the comment I feel like the smartest kid on the short bus. It is all perspective. I do not expect to be taken seriously, I expect that anything controversial I say will be responded to with “Well you know, he has brain damage.”

In a society which so easily dismisses complaints as “first world problems” I try to point out the human element, the issues we all face. The turbulence following the election shows us pervasive arrogance and violence, which are real world problems, reaching across all social and economic barriers. The people claiming to be intellectually superior were suddenly made aware of the electoral college, one person standing on her degree in history claiming it had only been used five times previously (she did not realize it has been the method of election in all of the sixty previous elections, yet considers herself politically informed). I live in the Northeast, every year people forget how to deal with snow, I suspect some forget what snow is. After a lifetime of ambiguous sexuality and taunts of “faggot,” I was called a homophobe because I didn’t vote for Hillary. The problem is a failure of perspective, people who protest in the name of tolerance acting with no tolerance. It would be easy to blame this on a lack of education, but most of these people will tell you how educated they are, largely because they never bothered with the definition of education. To them it means they attended a particular institution, not that they learned anything useful. Someone told them they were educated, they never realized that the truly educated never stop learning. They feel they are compassionate because they have seen compassionate people and it made them feel good, as they drove past. I cannot argue with such arrogance, it would be the equivalent of trying to convince a crazy person they were not sane.

I recognize I am probably not completely sane. Which in a counter intuitive way validates my sanity. I listen to people who do not listen to themselves. I guess I’m asking for it.

I believe I have always been a gentleman, as well as a gentle man. That may be nearing an end. I am increasingly frustrated and irritable. I am not happy with the person I am becoming, but I see no way out, and I am looking hard.

I pictured it last night as a four engine aircraft running on three engines. Looks easy, but that is not how it was designed, that fourth engine had a purpose. The twin engines are fine with only two engines, there are plenty of single engine craft and helicopters. I should be happy with three engines, but I know I used to have four.

I attended a gathering last night, my big night out this week, and ran into someone I saw a few months ago. He remembered my name, we had met at a gathering of a related group which had been both of our first group forays. Of course I didn’t remember his name, and probably wouldn’t have without the injury. I was never good at names. After a while something happened which caused Sam to mention my brain injury, and he said “But you look okay.”

Yes, I look okay. Because what is wrong is something you cannot see. I falter, walk with a cane, am hard of hearing, can’t see very well, but those issues are common in people of my age. I have adapted. I smile, ask people to repeat what they have said or to speak more slowly, I have a beautiful cane, I connect abstract ideas on occasion, I dress well, I fit in. I can remember trivial events, which covers for the fact I forget what I am saying mid sentence. Writing does the same, you don’t stop every few words as you read this, you don’t know how much I struggle with each sentence.

A relative called the other night. I suspect he meant well, but there is enough of me left to feel critical of his aloofness. I can remember telling him about what I am doing, he acted as if he did not. He made some insulting comments, which I am sure he did not realize were insulting. When Emma was fighting cancer, another relative felt the need to casually insult the profession of restaurant server. When I reminded him that Emma had been a server most of her career, he doubled down, directly insulting my dying wife. Both of these people are related to me, not many of my close friends can believe it. I wanted to hang up, but I am too nice. I shook until I fell asleep, and slept poorly. The next morning when I could collect my thoughts I wrote him an email, explaining the pain he had caused. I knew better, nothing was going to change. He wrote back, I couldn’t bring myself to read his email. I asked Sam to read it, just to tell me if there were any questions to which I should respond. She said it wasn’t as bad as she thought it would be, but she hadn’t read my letter to him, so I let her read the email I had written. Her opinion changed, so I am glad I did not read his email. My words did not merit his response, which I had expected. This has nothing to do with my injury, it’s just a reminder of a disappointing relationship at time I need a more supportive one.

There are these kind of issues, the untangling of issues. I run into it with physicians, who try to separate my multiple sclerosis, traumatic brain injury, and advancing age rather than just treating the symptoms. Insurance is even more frustrating, because it’s just a faceless voice on the telephone, giving their personal interpretation; if I call back I get another faceless voice with their own interpretation. Social Security Disability is scary, because from what I can gather it is a monolith, the unimpeachable opinion of one person determining my future, and that person has no medical training upon which to form this opinion. Personal interactions are the worst, everyone intends empathy, and I can finally understand the meaning of “You don’t know how I feel.” Depression is present, but I actually have brain damage. I can’t just think of things another way. I want to be gracious, but I don’t believe I can keep up the facade much longer. I don’t know how well I’ve kept it up so far, people have been falling away from me, no one has visited, I have received very little support from my fundraising attempts.

A few years ago, I visited Lieve’s brother in Belgium. She was never precise about his disability, but he was in his forties, living in an institution, wheelchair bound. He cannot speak, but he recognized me from a previous visit. We all had lunch in the day room, with the other patients. This was a residential care facility, there were no white coats, and most interactions were in Flemish. An hour or so in, I realized I could not tell the patients from the staff, and they probably felt the same of me. I was pleasant, attentive, but my English just sounded like gibberish, my Flemish was broken. I feel the same now, my adaptations and eloquence make me appear to be “normal,” I carry no physical scars, I look okay, but I am not.

I am scared. Not as much by my crumbling finances as my crumbling brain. I may end up homeless, if things continue the way they are certainly by this time next year, perhaps much sooner. I had once thought losing one’s mind would be peaceful, a gentle descent into forgetfulness. Sad that one of the last things I am to learn is the solitude of a broken mind.

You have heard the phrase, “One step forward, two steps back.” It is easy to picture in a two dimensional sense, but brain injury develops in a four dimensional matrix. My memory shows a glimpse of the past and I can’t process information as well, my balance improves but I can’t hear. My processing improves but my eyes can’t focus. Last week on the way to rehab, I heard a story on the radio about Pennsylvania, and my old drivers license number popped into my head. 20 329 373. Not many people know their current drivers license number, I haven’t driven in Pennsylvania since 1999. Later, at rehab, I scored lower in processing speed and attention than previously. I wrote a paragraph for my speech therapist in which I did not cover the issues of the assignment, but she went out of her way to say how well written it was. One step forward, one step down, one step sideways.

Today, 28 October 2016, would be Emma’s sixtieth birthday. I know what we went through together, I’ve read her original blog and the book I wrote, I can remember little things about her, the way she pursed her lips when she was excited, the way she quit smoking in one second, the way she let go of everything except my hand. I know but do not remember that I cried most of January over her, suddenly lost in loss again.

2004 at the Alamo.

I can see her at sixty, having survived cancer, strong and defiant. I like to think she wouldn’t dye her hair, the grey looked rather nice on her, she would have bounced back from the damage of cancer. I try to imagine I will bounce back from this injury, what life would be like together again. I recognized this morning that in April this year I went to Record Store Day, standing in the cold for hours to get the release of a picture disc of David Bowie’s “Wild is the Wind,” her favorite Bowie song. Sam tells me I was still fairly oblivious back then, although I was living pretty much independently and had driven to New Providence to do some yard work with my shattered arm for a deceased friend’s mother. This was when I didn’t know how badly my brain was injured, I was worse because I felt better than I actually was.

I have little emotion of late, but I woke in the middle of the night thinking of Emma, and realized I was crying. The tears running down the side of my face gave it away.

Regaining my emotions may be a double edged sword, I so want to feel, but I know it will be beyond control. I see other people in my rehab who are irritable and angry, which I hear is the norm for people with brain injuries. I see all the anger in the world today and I want no part of it. I know I need to be upset with my financial situation, at very least I am too broke now to make irresponsible impulse purchases. I am making attempts to raise some money by begging, Emma would never approve. I don’t either, but there are no other options.

I had a doctor’s appointment this week, I know because there was a message on my answering machine. I assumed it would be on my calendar so I erased the message. It wasn’t on my calendar. The name on the caller ID was a neurologist, and I have no memory of making an appointment with a different neurologist, I know I made an appointment with a gastroenterologist. I have no idea which gastroenterologist I made an appointment with, and there is nothing on my calendar, so I guess I’ll start from scratch. Hard to explain how I feel on missing the colonoscopy I’ve been putting off for eight years, I am disappointed because I finally got around to making an appointment, but on the other hand, I am not excited about a colonoscopy in any way.

Bits and pieces flow in and out. One exercise I had in cognitive therapy was tracking random numbers floating on a screen and add them together. Life mirrors therapy, I could handle five numbers, and sums less than forty. After that it was more than I could handle.

I recall when I was a technician, my manager could not fathom how I managed to travel from point to point in such short time, once describing my velocity as “low Earth orbit.” I loved driving, the highway like a river, the cars flotsam and jetsam. I knew what everyone was going to do, I could tell the blue car three cars ahead on the right was going to make a left turn at the signal ahead, so I would change lanes not to be behind the people slamming on their brakes to avoid him. The red car three back to the left was going to accelerate and pull into my lane, so I would speed up a touch and let him fall in behind me. I floated down the road, rarely touching the brakes. Today I am able to recognize how many judgements were being made, quickly and seamlessly. I recognize it because I am unable to accomplish it, I know why I can’t, there is no compensation for my present state, and probably never will be. I’ll never be forty years old again either.

Much of my therapy is not what most people consider therapy. We’re not trying to return to where I was, we’re trying to compensate as much as possible, and to accept who I am. There is some mourning for who I was, but if my focus will be on surviving, which Emma inspired in every way, I have to accept who I am today.

Brain injuries are called an invisible disease. You don’t see the effects of brain injury, and people being the kind beings they are tend to ignore minor frailties. We think if you have a brain injury you should be a drooling idiot, unable to dress yourself, so we don’t see the damage when someone is struggling with everything they have to appear “normal.” Brain Injury survivors don’t make it any easier, putting on a brave face, compensating for our deficits; we are accomplices in hiding brain injury. We are trying to keep going.

My injury hid from me. I didn’t see it but my personality changed a number of times, and probably still is changing. I realize my injury is invisible to others, which makes applying for disability, or asking for help, all the more difficult.

I have never been much for clothing, a few years ago a girlfriend commented about how I disrobed when I came home. As I remember, she was naked at the time; I have put up with a number of hypocritical girlfriends over the last few years. When I got out of the hospital, I was not comfortable naked and wore pajamas for the first time since childhood. It felt normal, and although I have returned to sleeping nude, I still cover myself when walking around the apartment. I’m sure my flatmate appreciates that. Possibly related, I have no desire to be intimate, I don’t even kiss Sam very often. It took a while for me to notice, it appears to be endocrine related, as I was once exceptionally passionate.

I am fairly certain I could speak a couple of languages. Not always fluently, when I visited my father in Mexico with my second wife, my Spanish was adequate, but I have never taken a lesson. Three years of French and I could follow and participate in a conversation. A short course in Russian and it was me, not the linguists, who published a guide to pronouncing Russian place names for my wing in the Air Force. A Rosetta Stone course and I could struggle through Flemish with my ex-wife’s family in Belgium. And of course I was eloquent and precise in English. Today, I don’t call my mother on the phone because I cannot maintain a conversation. I am uncomfortable meeting strangers because my speech is broken. I have moments when I speak clearly, but I never know how long they will last. I still fall into Flemish occasionally (and uncontrollably, subconsciously), but the others are fragments, words but not sentences. At one point I could not complete a vision test because I did not know what to call the letters. I was more comfortable using the phonetic alphabet, and then I slipped back into (and out of) the more common American English letters.

At one time I would wake up and watch the news (I can’t bear to watch now, with all the election hatred). Something would spark and I would write an article, polish it, provide links and images, and publish that day. My schedule has not allowed that since I went back to work in 2014, but I was still able to put a thousand eloquent words together on demand. Since the accident several minor issues have prevented prolific writing, at first I couldn’t move my arm and hand, I was typing with one finger. Then as my arm healed, my brain faded, my drives, the self-motivation which causes me to write, disappeared. This article has taken a week, and I’m pushing hard because the exercise is good therapy.

I never realized how exhausting simple thinking can be. I can recall multitasking quite easily, working in the field as a technician I kept two dozen unique machines in my head, and although I was unusual in remembering an incredible number of part numbers (I had figured out the pattern so they made sense, like another language), other technicians handled as many machines. Today, I do puzzles that would bore my grandchildren and I get a headache. At today’s conference of the Brain Injury Alliance I had to leave early, and won’t be moving for the remainder of the day. I cannot commit myself to more than one task at a time, “multi-tasking” means getting both the garbage and the recycling out on the same day, and having leftovers for dinner.

Some things are intermittent. I had good practice dealing with intermediate afflictions over the last thirty years of Multiple Sclerosis. I can “pass” as unimpaired, I don’t often fall to the ground, and typically keep up my sense of humor. My life is mostly free of stress, so I can prepare myself for outings. I will be attending a Halloween party at the end of the month, and I am already panicking. I am thinking the best idea is to tell people I have had too much to drink, and not touch a drop.

One of the intermittent things is my memory. I can’t remember if Biogen is delivering my Tecfidera next week or if I missed it last week, but I can remember a campaign ad for Lyndon Johnson which only aired once in 1964. Okay, that ad is infamous but I remember seeing it air, as opposed to seeing it discussed. There are quite a few things in my life that now seem incredible, some I can verify, others I cannot. Were it not for the ones I can verify, I would simply discount everything; now I question everything. This results in a good deal of confusion and hesitancy, and requires an enormous amount of energy. I am tired constantly, but a spark still exists which tells me to keep going, to push through. Bad spark, I drive myself into the ground when I should just take a break and rejuvenate. One thing a speaker at the conference said struck me, she had been a police officer and was able to talk about what she was wearing at the time of her injury; like me she has no memory of the days surrounding the injury. She rebuilt the scene from reports and protocol, it was a cold day so she would have been wearing certain items, her uniform consisted of certain items, she has read the reports of the incident. You might think she remembers it to hear her tell the story, but I recognized the crutches I use, “according to reports,” “I have been told,” “standard protocol required.”

I am getting better at admitting “I don’t remember,” I can recall, but the explanation takes too long; kind of like when someone says “how are you?” and you say “Okay” even when you are not. The stories are there but I have no ties to them, the number of incredible stories causes me to hesitate; is it a memory or hallucination?

So I keep going. In the words of Robert Frost, “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life; it goes on.” Just because my injury is invisible does not mean I need to be.

There are things I do remember, among them a love of quantum mechanics. Of late I have been running reality checks on life.

Of the things I know, my name has always been a problem. My Birth Certificate says Kenneth Blake Cash. but my parents never mentioned Kenneth was my name until after that first day in Kindergarten where the teacher called me by the “wrong” name. Turns out they wanted to name me James but didn’t want people to call me Jimmy, so they named me Kenneth and called me Blake. It made just as much sense then as it does now, so I am not questioning my ability to process that information. I have had identity issues all my life, so I should be well equipped to handle them now. I just can’t find my equipment.

I hear on a routine basis that I need to accept who I am now. Usually unspoken is “because you are not who you were,” sometimes with lovely imagery about being a new person every sunrise. Yeah, right. This is not a glorious dawn.

I am not precisely starting afresh every day, but more so than before, as far as I can tell. My short term memory is failing, I compensate by taking notes (when possible) and telling people I have difficulty processing information due to a brain injury. This is supposed to be a good sign, I am accepting what I am not “allowed” to acknowledge. I am not supposed to say I am damaged, or that the efforts I make are unsatisfactory. See, in what is left of my mind, being unhappy with a failure is a positive move towards self improvement, but I am not supposed to damage my own self-esteem. Hard to have self-esteem when you don’t have a self.

Who I am is based on what I recall about how I got here. Even the things I remember I don’t feel a part of, making it difficult to distinguish between memory and dreams. Last week I had a strong memory of flying a C-130, I could feel the trembling and see the ground falling away. Trouble is, I have no memory of attending flight school, and the possibility I actually piloted a C-130 is remote. This scared me deeply. How many of the unlikely things in my past did not happen? My “sense of self” is exceptionally weak.

As far as I know, I do not suffer hallucinations. I am considering verifying the presence of new people, and if I am ever aware a hallucination has taken place I will.

Most of my “feelings” are vacant, I have little emotion, and I am not chasing their return. I see enough people adamant about untruths and fierce about mistaken beliefs centered around the election, I don’t want that to be my life. Some of my facilities are returning, although their return can be fleeting; I am told they are an indication of “higher executive functions.” I have a sense of sarcasm, and I’m fairly certain that I can be humorous and people are not laughing at me (today). I am aware that testosterone is missing, and I am scheduled to see an endocrinologist to measure pituitary function, these would seem to be affecting my drive and will. Frustration occurs when I know I should accomplish something and just can not begin the project. I also have read that my serotonin levels should be addressed, but I doubt my own medical skills enough to leave the dosaging of SSRIs to professionals. Again, I know (or think I know) enough to see my primary physician is less than skilled in the administration of SSRIs, so for this and other reasons I am seeking out a psychiatrist.

I know I am not who I was, but I am not certain exactly who I was. This appears to be the perfect opportunity to redefine myself, but I know I will have no past. Seems like it was interesting, I hate to let it go.

I have read through my articles since the accident, I can identify a spirit believing it is healing. That spirit no longer exists, which in a way is odd; from what I am told, recognizing my deficits is an improvement over not recognizing them. So I’m better because I know I’m worse. You should not be surprised at my confusion. Expect incredulous questions about the election.

My desire at this point is to record these facets of brain injury, so that one day I will be able to collect and edit them into a book. What I am most aware of is I may not feel this way in the future. I certainly don’t feel as I did nine, six, or even three months ago. Writing is what I can do, and apparently I am a fairly good writer, although it does not feel that way now. I know I was married to a woman named Emma, and I blogged through her fight with pancreatic cancer, and I turned that into a book. I know this because I looked it up. It is nice having things written down.

My ability to see the future is on par with my ability to see the past, I have no way of knowing this will ever turn into a book, it is a dream, and I am told it is useful to have goals. One goal is to financially survive until Social Security approves my disability claim, I’ve been selling what assets I can on Ebay, and I have started a charity fundraising web page on “YouCaring.” Please consider donating a few dollars, the theory is it all adds up.

For now, I am Blake to my friends, Kenneth to my ever growing army of doctors, K. Blake Cash to my readers, and KB to my social media contacts and grandson (he says “kib”). The man behind the name is developing, trying to establish an identity with a foggy history. I think he will be KB, my grandfathers were known by their initials, I am now the age they were when they met Blake, now Blake can meet KB.

The construction of KB will be on a foundation of those memories he can verify, woven with the beliefs which resonate with his presence. I can remember every printer I ever touched and long to take apart new ones (the psychiatrist has a Toshiba, cognitive therapist a Konica Minolta, Neurologist Kyocera Mita). I recall an astounding array of songs. I have a couple of bass guitars but I can’t get my fingers to where they are trying to go. I know it is acceptable to end a sentence with a preposition. I have a drum, and I know how to use it.

In just over a month I will have my 58th birthday, I don’t know who will be there.

You have probably been in the situation in which you try to explain something to someone who, for whatever reason, simply does not understand what you are saying. Communication is possible because we share a definition of the words we use. Telling someone something is beautiful is meaningless if by “Beautiful” you mean “green,” unless they also define “beautiful” as “green.”

I find that certain words have different meanings to me now than they used to. “Remember” is one of them. My memory is a collection of moments. I have always known my approach is different from that of other people, and from what I hear in therapy my “problem” is that my memory is now “normal.”

When I was teaching aircraft identification in the Air Force, I taught my form of memory. An aircraft is not just a list of features, it is an object. If you remember the object you can mentally walk around it and identify the features. This just seemed obvious to me. I have retained memories of childhood because they were events, one in particular, a motorcycle when I was four years old, moving from Corsicana Texas to Dallas. A young man had come over to say goodbye and was giving people rides on his motorcycle. It was a cold day, I can smell the exhaust and hear the engine. I have several similar memories from Corsicana, a toy, a party, a girl (wouldn’t you know, even at four).

Now my memories are mere recollections, I am aware something happened, but I have no sense of participating. I have the script, but not the experience. The clearest example is painting my bedroom last February. I know the room has been painted. I know I painted it. I know Sam and I went to Home Depot to buy the supplies. But I have no sense of actually doing any of these things, no memory of smelling the paint or holding the brush. I am aware that at the time my arm was so injured I could not move it, so I must have painted left handed. But no memory of left handed painting. No visions of paint covering the wall or dripping on the floor. I can imagine my personality telling Sam she wasn’t doing it right and taking over as she has told me I did, but no picture of those things happening.

The fog is expanding, more events are becoming lists in my mind. I know we went to the cinema to see the latest Star Wars film, Sam has said I was adamant from the time I was released from the hospital that I would see the film. I have been to that particular theatre many times. But I have no memory of going to the theatre or the film itself. I have fragments, I know the film was essentially episode IV recast, but I can’t recall any dialogue or tell you if we had popcorn. A strange twist, I was reminded of a blog entry from February (which I don’t remember writing) in which I mentioned seeing the film. At that time I could remember the other films in the saga, yesterday I watched episode VI and did not remember the film. I know there is an episode VI and that I watched it with Emma, but the scenes and dialogue are foreign to me. I do remember her distaste for science fiction in general and certain elements of the film in particular, she had been annoyed by the phrase “younglings,” hearing it brought back the script, but not the experience.

Other redefined words may exist, but I don’t know which words they are. I had a great deal of trouble explaining to the ophthalmologist what perceptions were missing, it was as if we were speaking different languages. This event I remember, so the memory issue is fragmented, and in fact we were speaking different languages, he was speaking ophthalmologist, looking for things manifested by different tests, I was speaking English, explaining things not revealed by the tests. I had a similar issue with the otolaryngologist who is supposed to uncover the reason for my hearing loss. He is looking for an inability to hear measured tones at precise frequencies and decibels. I am experiencing interference, as if my ear was blocked. Most sounds come through with the density of bone induction.

The inability to communicate has caused a loss of confidence. I am not as sure of my thoughts, ideas, and judgements. I am not sure if I am communicating with myself in my internal exchanges. When I express my thoughts, what are those thoughts based upon? I have had a couple of conversations about morality, and I realize I am ill equipped to argue my point of view. Part of this is not my thought process, there appears to be a sector that believes the universe is defined by their personal standards, even the words “truth” and “moral” have a single meaning, the meaning they have assigned. Debate is reduced to disparagement, and thus from an educational standpoint, useless.

Part, if not all, of my cognitive therapy is designed to teach me to accept who I am today. I recognize that. Hoping to be who I was last year is as futile as hoping to be the person I was thirty years ago. I know that each day we are new, a fresh set of twenty four hours of experiences build us into altered beings. The accident was merely a new experience, a major, life-changing experience, but life is changed every moment. I have been aging since birth, this was just a rapid acceleration of the process. I never wanted to be normal before, now it is a goal.

Like this:

The journey of one thousand miles begins with a single step. The trick is to get one foot to move. Sounds easy, but last week while driving I saw a stop sign, recognized what it was and what I was supposed to do, but never placed my foot on the brake pedal. As I traveled through the intersection I realized I hadn’t reacted properly, so at the next stop sign I said out loud “Stop Sign,” looked both ways but didn’t slow down. This got Sam’s attention. We did not have any more stop signs on our route, so she allowed me to keep driving. I am not aware of having this issue before or since.

But there’s that word, “aware.” I am fully aware that I am not certain of what I am aware.

I am regaining some sense of self-awareness, which my doctors and therapists say are a sign I am healing. Some even use the phrase “getting better” although I do not. I am aware of my deficits. I am aware of what I cannot do today that I could do before the injury. I am aware of who I no longer am. The story I am told is that I was not aware before, so this is a good sign. I do not believe a good sign has ever been so dark.

There is a lot of frustration. Frustrated that my body doesn’t work like it used to. Frustrated that my memory is missing events that I can remember remembering before. Frustrated that my vocabulary has decreased in range and accessibility. Frustrated that my “processing speed” has slowed. Frustrated that as I begin writing again damn near every sentence starts with”I.”

One thing my neurosurgeon has remarked about is my mood. Pleasant, which apparently is unusual with injuries such as mine. I’m beginning to understand why. I’ve also heard that drinking problems are more common in people with brain injuries. Not at all difficult to believe. I have been told to avoid alcohol, as it has a stronger effect on the injured brain, and delays healing. I am fully aware of the frustration involved in recovering from a traumatic brain injury, being told it will take at very least a year, but temporary disability payments only last for six months, and social security disability could take a year or more to be approved. Finding that my test results indicate I am average, so despite the fact I have never been average this is the only target for the doctors to aim. Finding that the hormones knocked out of balance cannot be addressed because hormone therapy (for men) is not covered by insurance. I can see why some folks might want a drink or seven.

The greatest challenge of my awareness is determining of what I am aware. Do I trust my ability to drive? Do I speak up at a gathering, or are my thoughts too muddled to communicate? I am redefining memory and thought, gathering memories requires effort, they don’t present themselves as they once did. Thinking requires both time and effort, as well as “spark,” the inspiration to consider, much the same as the inspiration to stop at stop signs. This article, an exercise which would have taken a few hours last year, has taken one month so far, and I do not believe I am half way through. And this is supposed to be the first chapter.

I have recognized my vocabulary has changed. Words mean different things than they did before. When I say “I don’t remember” it does not mean I am unaware of an event, it means I do not feel as if I participated. I can see the script in some cases, but the associated perceptions are absent. So I’m not entirely sure if I was actually there, that I know these things as facts. This is largely why I seldom write, I am unsure of the validity of my thoughts.

Physically there is some fear of falling. I used to embrace my “poor balance,” because I was still graceful. I could make falling down painless, even beautiful. I knew where the walls were and used them, bumping against them to check my location. I could, reliably, pirouette, now it takes twelve steps to turn around. I suspect this has lot to do with lack of confidence, if I could spin on a soft surface which would be safe to fall on I think I would try.

Sam has said it is like being with my twin brother. I look like Blake and have many of his mannerisms, but I’m not him.

The desire to write still exists, new topics occur to me, but I stare at the page with no motivation to type, words do not flow from my fingertips. This is the hardest to communicate with my therapists, the desire to move forward, to exercise my abilities, is missing. From my interactions with various doctors I think this may be because the cause is beyond their training. I’m pretty sure this is part of the hormonal imbalance, as I perceive no aggression, and from what I know I was a fairly aggressive person before.

My greatest barrier is my expectations. I used to be Superman. I could do anything I desired. I lived on the edge and never fell off. The most important part of my therapies is learning to accept who I am today. Still working on that. At one point I considered “changing” my name, back to the first name I never used, so I could stop trying to be Blake. So many doctors working off my hospital paperwork I have to be Kenneth when making appointments and making referrals.

This will be a difficult road, but I know I wouldn’t be here had I not had a good start. I will be Blake again, not the Blake you knew, but a person with most of his experiences. Silver linings are not always silver, but they are not lead.

This is step number one.

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One hundred and two years ago, in July of 1914, the first tendrils of the flame which would become known as The War to End All Wars were sprouting. It was not an accurate name, later it was referred to as the first World War, even before we started numbering them, because it was recognized the world was at war. About 4600 years earlier, the first recorded war, the Battle of Ur, involved the world of the time. There is little doubt there were wars before that, the desire to write was never as strong as the desire to kill.

Humans have always been at war with each other, there have been more than one hundred major conflicts since the War to End All Wars. It can be difficult to tell when one ends and another begins, the “first World War” began as a conflict between Serbia and Croatia, which continues today despite numerous “peace treaties.” The latest spark being when the cases each had against the other for genocide were dismissed in February 2015. The Prussian military analyst Carl Von Clausewitz (1780-1831), in his book On War, calls war “a continuation of politics carried on by other means;” the Serbians and Croates always seem to find those means so something should be happening over there soon. And in Syria, The Ukraine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Israel, Iraq, Nigeria, Libya, and The United States of America.

Yes, I am hearing the call here in the states. Credible calls which I shall not spread less I be accused of sedition. Hatred and mistrust is at an all time high in the states, look at a political candidate, the one who you won’t vote for, and realize that person’s supporters feel the same way as you. Their candidate has been unfairly vilified, the process was rigged against them, there are multiple conspiracies against them, and the other (your) candidate is the worst being to ever cobble together 46 chromosomes.

I am quite accustomed to hearing young people talk about revolution. I refrain from laughing out loud, they are often passionate, but direct action has no safe spaces. When our forefathers signed the Declaration of Independence, they said “we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” They understood the meaning of their words, they had lives, fortunes, and honor to pledge. The rumblings I am hearing today come from such people.

Recent events have been disturbing. Using a variety of ruses, the Bill of Rights has been under attack. In California, a law criminalizing speaking against climate change failed to pass, but the Department of Justice is considering civil actions to bypass the first amendment. The second amendment is dying the death of a thousand infringements. The third amendment, prohibiting forced quartering of soldiers, is in question in a case arguing that forcing land owners to allow government designated endangered species habitat is a violation. The fourth amendment has been all but overruled by the NSA. The fifth and sixth amendments, guaranteeing due process and listing rules of evidence and testimony, have been bypassed not only with drone strikes enforcing the death penalty against uncharged American citizens, but also in calls to use “no fly lists,” secret documents compiled without evidence, as reasons to deny second amendment rights. The seventh amendment, guaranteeing a speedy trial by jury, has not applied to the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay or victims of countless other renditions, both within the continental United States and elsewhere. The eighth amendment, protecting against cruel and unusual punishment, was saved by a filibuster, narrowly preventing drone strikes on American soil. They are currently used on foreign soil to avoid renditions, which can cause bad public relations; better to kill than imprison. The ninth and tenth amendments have simply been ignored, as the federal government created new rights, sometimes (as in the case of Same sex marriage) overruling the voice of the people who passed contradicting laws by referendum. The president has scoffed at separation of powers with his statements of “I have a phone and a pen,” essentially saying “I can do whatever I want, nah nah nah.” The corruption revealed in the FBI and DOJ deny our intrinsic faith in the rule of law, and in any power the Constitution might still hold. Rules are meaningless without enforcement.

The calls for rebellion have many sources, the tinder already glowing. The first war encompassing the world started with a botched assassination in Sarajevo, the American revolution was sparked by a tax on a breakfast beverage.